Case Files: The Secondary Investigation
Case Files
THE SECONDARY INVESTIGATION
My cold cases are secondary investigations. The primary investigations conducted by the original detectives either failed to produce a suspect or failed to produce a “file-able” criminal case with the district attorney.
In the secondary investigation, I typically need to study the alternative explanations to identify their weaknesses as I focus in on a known suspect. The following case files examine the explanations offered by those who try to stay “inside the room” of the natural, material universe to account for the evidence we’ve described in prior chapters. If you’re interested in a deeper (more academic) investigation, or are simply trying to respond to objections, these case files are for you. Look carefully to see if the explanations (1) are supported by the evidence, (2) attempt to errantly redefine the facts of the case, or (3) contain a logical contradiction.
IN THE BEGINNING: WAS THE UNIVERSE AN INSIDE JOB?
Sometimes an interpretation of evidence is inaccurate because it begins with an incorrect foundational idea. Theoretical physicists and cosmologists Stephen Hawking and James Hartle have suggested this might be the case in our investigation of the universe’s origin.
If our understanding of time is incorrect, we may be wrong about the beginning of space, time, and matter. If that’s the case, we may be able to stay “inside the room” of the natural universe when searching for its original cause. In an effort to rethink the concept of time, they developed a theory introducing “imaginary time.” While real time is visualized directionally from the past to the future, Hawking and Hartle’s imaginary time is conceptualized as another “direction” of time, moving at “right angles” to real time. If we think of the history of the universe as having a point of origin, followed by expansion, we might characterize the process visually as a conical diagram:
Hawking and Hartle’s theory altered the shape of this cone, however, replacing the point of origin (the “cosmic singularity”) with a rounded early history of the universe. Instead of coming into being at a singular point in the past, the origin of the universe is indeterminate and indefinite:1
But even this imaginary-time scenario fails to provide an infinitely old universe. Hawking and Hartle’s cone, although it has no definitive point at its base, would still hold a scoop of ice cream quite nicely. Any model of time seeking to avoid a beginning results in an “open-ended” cone (a tube) extending infinitely into the past. While Hawking and Hartle have avoided a point, they’re stuck with a cone (of sorts). Their model fails to describe an infinitely old universe:
Worse yet, they are dependent on the viability of imaginary time. While this description of time offers a solution to singularities, there is little other reason to think it is true or worthwhile. In many ways, it appears simply to be an effort to solve the problem of cosmological singularity, even though it lacks evidential confirmation. When imaginary time calculations are converted back into real numbers and real time, singularities reoccur. Hawking admitted as much: “Only if we could picture the universe in terms of imaginary time would there be no singularities.… When one goes back to the real time in which we live, however, there will still appear to be singularities.”2
While imaginary-time models acknowledge the expansion (and inflation) of the universe, their attempt to eliminate a beginning consistent with our experience of real time is, as of yet, unsuccessful.
We’ve already examined three categories of explanations offered by those who want to stay “inside the room” of the universe to explain its origin (see page 29). Let’s look at these categories in more detail:
COULD THE UNIVERSE BE EXPANDING ETERNALLY?
Some scientists rejected the expansion of the universe as evidence of a beginning. Instead, they believed the universe was in a state of eternal expansion.
One historic version of this category of explanations was known as the Steady State Theory. Developed in the late 1940s, this model proposed an infinite stretching of the universe. As galaxies moved away from one another, new matter appeared in the voids created by the expansion. The universe (according to this theory) was continually expanding, not from a point of beginning, but as a continuous process of stretching and “infilling.” But this theory was not supported by any evidence, experimental or otherwise, and it isn’t consistent with the evidence we’ve already described. (The discovery of cosmic background radiation and the abundance of helium are incompatible with this theory.)
Scientists were also unable to offer a reasonable mechanism explaining the appearance of new galaxies. As a result, the scientific community has dismissed the Steady State Theory.
COULD THE UNIVERSE BE CYCLING BETWEEN EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION?
Given the difficulties inherent to the Steady State Theory, scientists proposed an alternative set of explanations known as oscillating or cyclical models. Early versions of these theories described the universe as continually expanding and contracting over the course of eternity.
According to these theories, the expansion of the universe would eventually slow under the gravitational attraction of its own mass, resulting in matter flying past itself in close proximity as the universe contracted to a region of incredible concentration. The universe would then appear to “bounce back” from this gravitational cycle, beginning yet another period of expansion.
But early oscillating models suffered from several evidential liabilities. There simply isn’t enough mass in the universe to halt the expansion we observe or to reverse it toward contraction.
In fact, redshift measurements of distant supernovas reveal the universe is expanding faster now than it was when it was much younger. Peter M. Garnavich, professor of astrophysics and cosmology physics at the University of Notre Dame, said, “We cannot make much of a conclusion from the single farthest supernova we’ve seen, but when we average it with several others, we find, to a 95 percent level of confidence, that the density of matter is insufficient to halt the expansion of the universe.”3
This is consistent with what we might expect given the second law of thermodynamics. Remember, usable energy decreases over time. This means with each successive cycle of expansion and contraction, the useful energy in the universe would decrease, making the cycles larger and longer over time. Now “rewind” the timeline. As we go back in time, these cycles would be smaller and smaller until, once again, we come to a point of cosmic singularity. For this reason, early oscillating models failed to eliminate the beginning of the universe.
A more recent cyclical model seeks to avoid the problem posed by the second law of thermodynamics. Known as the Cyclic Ekpyrotic Scenario,4 this model envisions the universe as a three-dimensional membrane (sometimes called a “brane”). It exists in a five-dimensional space-time with another similar brane.
According to this theory, these two branes approach each other in an eternal, repeating cycle. The recurring collisions between these branes cause the expansion we observe in our universe. So, even though our universe is currently expanding, this expansion is not evidence of a beginning. Instead, the expansion is simply evidence of ongoing brane interaction.
This model is highly speculative, however, and relies on yet unproven physical theories.5 In addition, those advocating for this model are still unable to explain why there are only two branes in this environment and why these two branes are so perfectly aligned. Critics of the model question how physical information from one cycle could ever pass through to the next and note the lack of physics explaining the “bounces” in the first place.6
Cyclical models of the universe (both new and old) may avoid a universe with a beginning, but they do so on highly speculative grounds and without the strong evidential support enjoyed by the Standard Cosmological Model. Physicist Andrei Linde admitted, for example, the Cyclic Ekpyrotic Scenario is “very popular among journalists” but is “rather unpopular among scientists.”7
COULD THE UNIVERSE BE PART OF A LARGER, ETERNAL ENVIRONMENT?
Discoveries related to subatomic “virtual particles” opened up yet another alternative explanation for researchers rejecting a cosmic beginning. Some scientists believe virtual particles arise because of fluctuations in the energy contained in a vacuum at the quantum level. Cosmologists, working with this information, have proposed an infinitely old, primordial vacuum preexisting our universe. According to this theory, energy fluctuations in this eternal vacuum caused tiny universes to be born the same way virtual particles pop into existence.
This process is sometimes compared to a pot of boiling water. The pot is the primordial vacuum, and the emerging bubbles are comparable to the universes emerging as part of a natural process. Our universe is just one of an infinite number of universes, all of which came into existence in the primordial environment.
But if the primordial vacuum is eternal (infinitely old), we would expect an infinite number of universes to have popped into existence in an infinite number of locations across the vacuum. Shouldn’t we expect these “bubble universes” to eventually intersect or collide inside the vacuum? Shouldn’t we have seen this kind of interaction in our own universe? Not if the vacuum is also expanding. If the distance between universes is expanding faster than the universes themselves, we wouldn’t see any interaction at all, according to those who propose such a model.
But if the primordial vacuum is expanding, we still have to account for a point of origin from which it expanded. Scientists who propose the sudden appearance of virtual particles (or universes) from a primordial vacuum still have to account for the primordial vacuum. Remember, according to the Standard Cosmological Model, all space, time, and matter began to exist at a point in the past. Nothing existed prior to this point of origin.
Theoretical physicists proposing “emergent” models have redefined the notion of nothing by offering a primordial vacuum containing much of what we commonly consider to be something. According to Stanford University theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind, “The vacuum represents potential for all things that can happen in that background. It means a list of all the elementary particles as well as the constants of nature that would be revealed by experiments in that vacuum. In short, it means an environment in which the Laws of Physics take a particular form.”8 According to this definition, the primordial vacuum is spatial, filled with particles, governed by natural laws, charged with energy, and able to change over time.
Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss exemplified this inclination to redefine the meaning of nothing. In a television interview with Stephen Colbert, he said, “Physics has changed what we mean by ‘nothing’ … Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles popping in and out of existence … If you wait long enough, that kind of ‘nothing’ will always produce particles.”9
According to Krauss, if we start with an energy-rich vacuum and “wait long enough,” matter will pop into existence. But this fails to account for the initial existence of the spatial vacuum, the primordial particles, and the fluctuating energy. It also fails to describe the existence and nature of time in such an environment, given that time, as we know it, began with our universe. In essence, Krauss, like other scientists who offer emergent alternatives, must redefine nothing to include many of the properties we (and the Standard Cosmological Model) commonly accept as something.
Krauss admitted as much: “It would be disingenuous to suggest that empty space, endowed with energy, which drives inflation, is really nothing. In this picture one must assume that space exists and can store energy, and one uses the laws of physics like general relativity to calculate the consequences.”10
But can we really avoid a beginning from nothing by simply redefining nothing? When theoretical physicists behave in this way, they remind me of my sons when they were teenagers. They would come home from school and look in the refrigerator for something to eat. My wife always stocked the refrigerator with healthy food, leading at least one of my sons to proclaim, “There’s nothing to eat in the refrigerator!”
They had, of course, redefined the meaning of nothing.
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While a similar approach to redefining nothing may help theorists account for the origin of the universe by avoiding a nonspatial, atemporal, nonmaterial first cause, this definition is every bit as disingenuous as my son’s complaint there was nothing to eat in the refrigerator. The universe (and everything in it) leaped into existence from nothing, and we cannot avoid this fact by redefining nothing.
TAMPERING WITH THE EVIDENCE: WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?
Can we stay “inside the room” of the universe to explain the appearance of fine-tuning in the cosmos? Physicists and cosmologists have imagined a number of possible explanations. Let’s see which, if any, are reasonable in light of the evidence.
IS FINE-TUNING UNREQUIRED?
Some physicists have simply denied the existence of narrow, fine-tuned universal constants by trying to demonstrate life could emerge from broader, less specific parameters.1 There are good reasons, however, to reject this conclusion:
THIS EXPLANATION REQUIRES A BROAD DEFINITION OF “LIFE”
Those who think life could emerge from less specific parameters (such as the late particle physicist Victor Stenger) must begin by lowering the bar on the kind of life our universe might have created: “In my view,” wrote Stenger, “life is a property that any sufficiently complex non-linear, interacting, dissipative system will develop in a sufficiently long time. So I will ignore those parameters that constrain life to our biology and our biology alone.”2
If we are willing to redefine the notion of “life” (as something other than the ability to ingest food, metabolize energy, adapt to the environment, and reproduce), we may, in fact, be able to broaden the parameters until the appearance of fine-tuning vanishes altogether. But we would be cheating from the onset. When I entered Carrie’s death scene, I wasn’t interested in the parameters necessary to cause the house to smell like gas or produce some less lethal condition; I was interested in the conditions resulting in her death. I couldn’t settle for anything less.
In a similar way, our investigation of the universal life scene isn’t interested in some imaginary form of life; it’s appropriately focused on the parameters resulting in the existence of intelligent, sentient beings capable of pondering the evidence in the first place.
THIS EXPLANATION IGNORES THE EVIDENCE OF NARROW PARAMETERS
More importantly, any argument against a narrow calibration of the forces we’ve discussed flies in the face of the evidence. Physicists from a variety of scientific perspectives agree on the restrictive nature of the universal constants.3
Sir Fred Hoyle put it this way: “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”4
The appearance of fine-tuning must be addressed and cannot be denied by redefining life or ignoring the scientific evidence.
IS FINE-TUNING THE RESULT OF CHANCE?
Some have argued the apparent fine-tuning is simply a fortuitous accident. From this perspective, there is no further reason to examine the issue at all. Our universe is simply what it is; happenstance explains our existence. This assessment of the facts also seems insufficient:
THIS EXPLANATION DISCOURAGES INVESTIGATION
Imagine what would happen if we took the same approach at Carrie’s death scene. After observing all the “coincidences” in the foundational, regional, and locational evidences, we walk away from the scene without investigating further.
Would this have satisfied Helen? I doubt it. In fact, if we had attributed Carrie’s death to chance, we never would have arrested her killer. Science, like homicide investigations, compels us to search beyond the possibilities of chance when the evidence warrants it. The layers of evidence pointing to fine-tuning, according to Paul Davies, “cry out for explanation.”5
THIS EXPLANATION IGNORES THE HIGH IMPROBABILITIES
Beyond this, an appeal to chance ignores the high improbability of our life-permitting universe. The odds against the level of fine-tuning related to dark matter alone has been likened to 10120 to 1. Davies likened these odds as unlikely as flipping a coin and getting heads no fewer than four hundred times in a row. Odds this great stretch the imagination and make chance explanations unreasonable.6
IS FINE-TUNING THE RESULT OF PHYSICAL NECESSITY?
Perhaps our universe is the way it is because the laws of physics are inflexibly fixed. If this is the case, our life-permitting universe is a physical necessity. But this explanation fails on several levels:
THIS EXPLANATION LACKS EVIDENTIAL SUPPORT
When we examined the evidence in Carrie’s death scene, we recognized immediately the conditions in the house could have been different. Physicists have examined the conditions of the universe and have come to a similar conclusion. There is no evidence the conditions we see in the universe are unavoidable. In fact, many physicists postulate alternative universes with different circumstances are equally logical and possible.7 If the laws of physics could have been different, a life-permitting universe is not an inevitability.
THIS EXPLANATION IGNORES THE REGIONAL AND LOCATIONAL EVIDENCE
Even if the laws of physics are rigidly fixed, this would only address the rare relationships observed in the foundational evidence. It still fails to explain the rare improbabilities at the regional and locational levels. A finite universe possessing our laws of physics doesn’t necessarily result in a life-permitting galaxy, star system, or terrestrial planet. The fine-tuning case, like Carrie’s death scene, must be addressed at all these levels and not simply at the foundational level of physical law.
IS FINE-TUNING AN OBSERVATIONAL PHENOMENON?
Some scientists have cited something known as the “anthropic principle” or the “observer selection effect” to explain the appearance of fine-tuning. Anyone who exists and inspects their environment will, of course, discover a world encompassing whatever it takes for them to exist. If they didn’t discover a world of this nature, they wouldn’t exist to examine it in the first place.8 From this perspective, it shouldn’t surprise us to find life-permitting conditions, since without them, we wouldn’t be alive to make any observations.
THIS EXPLANATION CONFUSES OBSERVATIONS WITH EXPLANATIONS
While an observer who exists in our universe will most certainly find it highly probable to observe fine-tuned conditions, this does not mean it was highly probable such a universe would exist in the first place. Imagine if, as detectives, we had arrived at Carrie’s home and said, “We shouldn’t be surprised to find dead bodies in a house with the windows and doors suspiciously closed and the vents and gas lines found as they were. If the conditions weren’t like this, no one would have died and we wouldn’t have been called to the scene!”
How long do you think we would have kept our badges as detectives? As investigators, we were dispatched to the scene to find out why the windows, doors, vents, and gas lines were in their conditions. Either they were manipulated by an intelligent being or they weren’t. Good detectives can’t confuse observations with explanations.
THIS EXPLANATION IGNORES OBVIOUS INFERENCES
We made several observations at Carrie’s death scene. But if Carrie and her child had not died in this scene (if they had not been home, for example), the circumstances we observed would have been meaningless. In fact, we wouldn’t have been called to the scene in the first place. But when the dead bodies were discovered, the obvious inferences from our observations compelled us to look for a better explanation.
Physicists and cosmologists studying the appearance of fine-tuning are similarly compelled. Rather than dismiss the evidence as an observer selection effect, they continue to search for a better explanation. In fact, their ongoing dismissal of the anthropic principle motivates them to propose additional scientific theories in an effort to explain the obvious inferences.
IS FINE-TUNING A CONSEQUENCE OF PARALLEL WORLDS?
String (or “M”) theorists propose another way to explain the appearance of fine-tuning. They suggest the existence of parallel worlds (universes). In string theory models, a tremendous number of universes exist in different dimensions, and all of them are invisible to us. Their properties may be very different from our own, including their physical laws. String theorists are searching for a “Theory of Everything” (TOE) capable of describing the existence and nature of these multidimensional parallel universes.
THIS EXPLANATION LACKS EVIDENTIAL CONFIRMATION
Many physicists and other scientists reject string theory, citing the lack of observational or experimental confirmation. In fact, these skeptics argue the theory—in whatever form it finally takes—is incapable of being scientifically verified.9
THIS EXPLANATION RESULTS IN ABSURDITIES
Like multiverse explanations (discussed in the next section), string theory models resulting in an infinite number of coexisting universes typically result in absurdities based on the vast number (from 10500 to infinite) of parallel worlds they propose. Like other theories requiring an actual infinite, string theories result in some amusing, if not preposterous, realities (we’ll discuss these in the next section).
IS FINE-TUNING A CONSEQUENCE OF THE MULTIVERSE?
For many theorists, the multiverse has the best chance of explaining the appearance of fine-tuning in our universe. Other explanations, such as appealing to chance or physical necessity, offer solutions from “inside the room” of our universe. Multiverse explanations, however, point once again to an external causal agent: a mechanism capable of creating an incredibly large number of universes, each with its own set of physical laws.
Most of these universes in the multiverse collection are incapable of permitting life. Our universe, however, through “a series of cosmic accidents,” just happens to support our existence.10 Multiverse theories overcome the incredible odds against life (and explain the appearance of fine-tuning) by increasing the chances of such a life-permitting universe.11
Multiverse theorists have proposed the creation of multiverses through a number of mechanisms, most commonly by way of “eternal inflation,” or “quantum tunneling.” Some physicists suggest the existence of an eternal, primordial vacuum (as we discussed in the last chapter). According to proponents of eternal inflation models, if an infinitely old vacuum has been experiencing inflation, and the tiny bubble universes we described have emerged, each bubble universe might have its own characteristics and physical laws.
Other physicists (such as Alex Vilenkin) propose “quantum tunneling from nothing” to explain the existence of an ensemble of universes without eternal inflation. In these quantum tunneling models, diverse universes pop into existence, because in “quantum mechanics the behavior of physical objects is inherently unpredictable and some quantum processes have no cause at all.”12
In both eternal inflation and quantum tunneling models, the universes (some older than others) emerging from the vacuum coexist within the larger multiverse. In each of these proposals (eternal inflation, quantum tunneling, and even string theory models), the existence of a vast array of universes makes one like ours an inevitability.
THIS EXPLANATION LACKS EVIDENTIAL CONFIRMATION
Like string theory or M-theory proposals, multiverse models lack observational or experimental evidence. Scientists can’t access other universes in the multiverse because they are separated within the vacuum by too great a distance (and according to these theories, this distance is growing).13
As a result, many scientists, especially string theorists, are suspicious about the existence of a multiverse. Some call it a “fantasy”; others call it “intellectually bankrupt” or a “cheap way out.” Lacking evidential support, many physicists see the multiverse theory as deficient when compared to efforts to find unity within the laws of physics.14
But eternal inflation models face an even greater barrier. Our expert witness Alexander Vilenkin has already testified (along with Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Audrey Mithani) against the possibility of an eternal, uncaused, expanding vacuum. According to these experts, if inflation (expansion) has been occurring in this vacuum, it must have had a beginning and therefore cannot be eternal.
THIS EXPLANATION REQUIRES FINE-TUNING
If there is a multiverse vacuum capable of such creative activity, it would be reasonable for us to ask how the physics of such an environment could be so fine-tuned to create a life-permitting universe. As Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne observed, any proposed multiverse mechanism “needs to have a certain form rather than innumerable possible other forms, and probably constants too that need fine-tuning in the narrow sense … if that diversity of universes is to result.”15
Eternal inflation, for example, requires a precise relationship between cosmological constants of gravity and the other forces of quantum physics. In other words, the vacuums proposed in multiverse models are equally fine-tuned.16
THIS EXPLANATION RELIES ON SPECULATIVE NOTIONS OF TIME
Theorists who propose a preexisting vacuum must account for the nature of time in this setting. All descriptions of this vacuum describe it as temporal (with bubble universes emerging or quantum events occurring over time). But the Standard Cosmological Model (as we described it in the prior chapter) indicates time, as we know it, began with our universe.17 Multiverse explanations must provide an account for the temporal nature of the vacuum lying at the core of their theory.
THIS EXPLANATION RESULTS IN ABSURDITIES COMMON TO “INFINITES”
Like string theory models, multiverse proposals result in a number of interesting (and disturbing) absurdities. If there are an infinite number of universes in the multiverse collection, and there exists a remote chance one of them could have a set of laws like ours (and a history similar to our own), we must accept (given the infinite size of the multiverse) an infinite number of universes resembling ours. In fact, if there’s a small chance any of these similar universes might have precisely the same history as our own (with someone exactly like you reading this book at this very moment), there are an infinite number of universes precisely the same as ours in every possible way.
The absurdity of this proposal has been noted by a number of physicists and philosophers. Multiverse models describe an ensemble of universes both identical and slightly different from our own. As Alan Guth admitted, “There is a universe where Elvis is still alive.”18
The incredulity of such a proposal seems a high price to pay to accommodate a theory yet unproven by the evidence. As Paul Davies said, “The very notion that there could be not just one, but an infinity of identical copies of you, leading identical lives (and infinitely many others leading similar but not identical lives) is deeply unsettling.”19
Worse yet, if the multiverse model is true, we may not even be living in a “real” universe at all. If there is even a small chance our universe is simply a Matrix-like20 simulation (and this possibility certainly exists), the infinite number of universes assures there are also an infinite number of such “computer simulation” universes. While this probably seems absurd (and it ought to), it is the zany, inevitable consequence of multiverse theories.21
THIS EXPLANATION ACKNOWLEDGES AN EXTERNAL CREATIVE CAUSE
Those who propose multiverse models acknowledge the difficulty in explaining the apparent fine-tuning of the universe from “inside the room.” Multiverse models attribute the conditions of our universe to an external cause: a primordial vacuum possessing attributes necessary to create a life-permitting universe.
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The laws governing this primordial vacuum, however, are equally difficult to explain. Even Lawrence Krauss acknowledged their foundational nature: “The laws themselves are all that exist. These laws themselves require our universe to come into existence, to develop and evolve, and we are an irrevocable by-product of these laws. The laws may be eternal, or they too may have come into existence, again by some yet unknown but possibly purely physical process.”22
The existence of these external laws, as well as the vacuum in which they exist, must be explained, and “this does beg the possible question, which might of course not be answerable, of what, if anything, fixed the rules that governed such creation.”23
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE: DOES THE TEXT REQUIRE AN AUTHOR?
The origin of life requires the emergence of pre-biotic molecules (amino acids and nucleotide bases). Where could this have happened? Could life have originated from “inside the room,” and if so, where? Let’s investigate explanations from “inside the room” in more detail.
COULD IT HAVE STARTED IN THE ATMOSPHERE?
Stanley Miller was working on his PhD thesis under Harold Urey in 1953 when he mixed ammonia, methane, water vapor, and hydrogen (thinking these gases represented the atmosphere of the early Earth) and circulated the gases through an electric charge. Within a week, he found several types of amino acids had been created.
THE COMPOSITION OF THE EARLY ATMOSPHERE IS PROBLEMATIC
While this experiment seemed to suggest pre-biotic molecules such as amino acids could be created in the early atmosphere of the Earth if charged with lightning, the results now appear to be less than impressive. Scientists currently know the methane and ammonia mixture used by Miller and Urey did not represent the atmosphere of the early Earth.1
With our present understanding of the gases existing in the primitive atmosphere, it’s unlikely that sufficient quantities of amino acids could be produced in the way the Miller-Urey experiment suggested. Scientists have been unable to propose an atmospheric scenario capable of creating the important amino acids in the quantities necessary to originate life.2
COULD IT HAVE STARTED IN WATER?
If Earth’s atmosphere wasn’t the origin of pre-biotic molecules, is it possible these molecules could have emerged naturally in bodies of water? Soviet biologist Aleksandr Oparin first proposed the idea in 1924, arguing “chemical evolution” took place in the Earth’s early waters, resulting in the formation of amino acids (and then primitive proteins). Most current biologists and origin-of-life researchers are now very pessimistic about this prospect.
AMINO ACID AND NUCLEOTIDE FORMATION IN WATER IS PROBLEMATIC
Even if we assume the presence of amino acids within a primordial soup, the emergence of simple cells is an unlikely reality. In order for cells to form in this environment, proteins would have to assemble from amino acids at the same time polymer chains (DNA) formed from nucleotides. All of this would have to occur in water, an environment hostile to both processes. Unless several highly specific catalysts were lucky enough to be present—a highly unlikely possibility—the formation of proteins and nucleotides would never occur.3
THE PRESENCE (OR ABSENCE) OF OXYGEN IS PROBLEMATIC
The chemical structure of the early Earth (including any possible primordial soup) presents a pair of dilemmas for the creation of pre-biotic materials and the formation of living cells. The first predicament involves oxygen. If oxygen was present in the early atmosphere, amino acids would have been unlikely to form. Oxygen shuts down the “pre-biotic chemistry pathways” required to form amino acids.4
But without oxygen in the early atmosphere, there would have been no ozone layer to prevent ultraviolet radiation from the sun. This radiation breaks down the chemical bonds of pre-biotic molecules. So, in either situation, with or without the presence of oxygen, pre-biotic molecules would have been difficult to come by.5
THE ABSENCE OF PHOSPHATE IS PROBLEMATIC
A second prohibitive dilemma involves phosphate, one of the rarest inorganic chemicals in the universe. Phosphate is critical for replicator molecules such as DNA and RNA; a phosphate molecule accompanies every nucleotide. ATP (adenosine triphosphate) is also critical to energy transfer. Scientists have been consistently unable, however, to find a natural process capable of harvesting the amount of phosphate necessary for DNA, RNA, or ATP from Earth’s early environment.
Anthony Keefe and Stanley Miller attempted to address this problem in a series of experiments. They began with a reasonable range of chemicals expected to exist on the early Earth and conducted a number of tests and experiments in an effort to propose a pathway to phosphate. However, nothing they tried produced enough phosphate to allow for the formation of replicator molecules.6
THE EQUAL “HANDEDNESS” PROPORTION IS PROBLEMATIC
Even if there existed a body of water rich enough in the right chemical concentrations (and protected from destructive radiation), this primordial pond would have been filled with both right- and left-handed molecules in equal proportions.
As described earlier, bio-molecules are formed from amino acids, nucleotides, and sugars possessing a single “handedness.” The formation of proteins, along with DNA and RNA molecules, is thwarted when right- and left-handed building blocks are present in equal proportions. The presence of wrong-handed amino acids, for example, will prevent the proper folding of protein strands. The presence of wrong-handed nucleotides will prevent the binding of complementary DNA strands.7
Scientists trying to explain the formation of proteins, DNA, and RNA in a primordial soup must, therefore, explain how there could arise a soup with only single-handed amino acids and nucleotides.8
THE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE “PRIMORDIAL SOUP” IS PROBLEMATIC
Measurements and samples taken across the globe in an effort to identify the residue of a primordial soup have failed to provide any supporting evidence. Carbon-13 and carbon-12 ratios, along with nitrogen-15 and nitrogen-14 ratios in ancient rocks and fossils, are consistent with the remains of living organisms rather than the pre-biotic materials proposed by those who claim life originated in Earth’s early bodies of water.9
COULD IT HAVE STARTED ON LAND?
Given the problems of trying to explain the origin of life in water, many scientists have abandoned the effort and moved to dry land. Some researchers have proposed a scenario in which local terrestrial conditions, like those occurring in clay, might capture water on occasion and provide pockets of protection called “microspheres,” allowing the necessary molecules to form and interact.
THE UNSTABLE AND FRAGILE ENVIRONMENT IS PROBLEMATIC
When creating such microspheres in the laboratory, however, scientists have been unable to find a way to stabilize them enough to allow for the formation of the necessary cellular components. In fact, even with the careful design and protection offered in the lab, these microspheres are incredibly unstable and fragile. When researchers attempt to create a dry-land scenario in which life can emerge (on clay or elsewhere), they typically create environments failing to accurately represent the conditions of the early Earth.10
When scientists carefully protect the chemical processes, isolate the handedness of molecules, and select pristine materials and environments to conduct their experiments, they are not realistically re-creating the conditions of the early Earth.
COULD IT HAVE STARTED IN THE EARTH?
In light of the hostile and fragile terrestrial conditions of our early planet, coupled with the problems we’ve examined related to water, some scientists have proposed an underground origin of life. Here, at least, the process of molecular formation would be protected from water and atmospheric interference.
Scientists have discovered a number of microbial organisms known as “extremophiles” at varying distances under the Earth, living in extreme conditions similar to what our early planet might have experienced. Some of these thrive in heat; others in cold, acidic, high-alkaline, or high-pressure conditions. These extremophiles possess DNA sequences once thought to place them at the base of an evolutionary tree; they are still considered to be among the oldest living organisms on the planet. Could their existence be the key to understanding the origin of life?
THE EMERGENCE OF BIOCHEMICAL PRECURSORS IS PROBLEMATIC
Even if micro-organisms happen to live in these conditions today, an explanation for their origin (rather than migration) would have to account for the emergence of pre-biotic molecules in such environments. While hot environments can certainly cause the formation of amino acids and other pre-biotic molecules—near deep-sea hydrothermal vents, for example—researchers have discovered these molecules and acids are incredibly fragile.11 Pre-biotic molecules formed in conditions of extreme heat, acidity, alkalinity, or pressure are likely to be destroyed quickly.
PROTEIN FORMATION IS PROBLEMATIC
Even if amino acids could form in such hostile locations, the odds of them combining usefully into proteins is remote. As it turns out, thermophiles protect their proteins with additional amino acids in key locations within each protein. This means it’s even harder (and therefore more unlikely) to form simple proteins from scratch in such an environment.
THE FORMATION OF RNA IS PROBLEMATIC
If life started in this environment, RNA (and/or DNA) formation would have to occur here as well. Researchers have already examined this possibility, however, and have discovered the three-dimensional structure of RNA is extremely unstable at high temperatures.12 Even when trying to remedy the problem with the addition of elements (like magnesium) to promote RNA stability, the added elements typically only make the problem worse.13
THE “UNDER/OVER” TRANSITION IS PROBLEMATIC
If extremophiles living in high temperatures under the Earth’s crust (known as “thermophiles”) were the earliest forms of life, they must have transitioned at some point to life above the ground. Researchers have difficulty imagining this transitional process, especially given the early appearance of “mesophiles,” ancient micro-organisms that live on the surface of the Earth. Thermophiles extract their energy from inorganic materials, but mesophiles extract their energy from photosynthesis. The internal structures of these two life-forms are too dramatically different to have evolved from one to the other in the short time span separating these two organisms.
THE HISTORIC PLACEMENT OF THERMOPHILES IS PROBLEMATIC
Considering the problems we’ve described here, scientists began to examine the DNA structures of thermophiles and mesophiles to see which of the two preceded the other. Many researchers now believe mesophiles came before thermophiles.14 If this is true, life did not originate under the ground.
COULD IT HAVE STARTED IN SPACE?
Some scientists, frustrated with the lack of progress locating a reasonable earthly source for pre-biotic molecules, have turned their attention to outer space. Water, hydrogen cyanide, methane, and ammonia exist in space, and amino acids (as well as two nucleotide bases, adenine and guanine) have been detected in meteorites. Could life have started somewhere other than Earth? Does life exist throughout the universe, carried from one place to another on meteorites (a theory known as “panspermia”)?
THE PRODUCTION OF COMPLEX MOLECULES IS PROBLEMATIC
While meteorites may contain a select few simple amino acids and nucleotide bases, this does not solve the larger issue related to how these molecules might eventually come to form the more complex proteins and nucleic acids necessary for life. While simple molecules may survive the incredible heat and acceleration required to escape a foreign planet, the long journey to Earth, and then the torturous heat and acceleration of entering the Earth’s atmosphere, more complex molecules have yet to be observed.15
THE RESULTING SCARCITY OF PRE-BIOTIC MATERIAL IS PROBLEMATIC
Given the quantity of pre-biotic material observed in meteorites and calculating generously, scientists have estimated how many molecules could have been delivered to Earth during the time in which life first appeared. Fazale Rana estimated only “.02 ounces of biologically significant amino acids would have been delivered globally per year.” As a result, “the concentration of amino acids in the ocean covering the whole surface of Earth would be less than a hundredth of a quadrillionth of a gram per cubic centimeter.”16
SHIFTING THE QUESTION ELSEWHERE IS PROBLEMATIC
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Perhaps more importantly, efforts to suggest life began in space seem to be an effort to shift the problem elsewhere rather than address the real issues at hand. By pushing the problem into the distance of space at a time in the even more distant past, scientists can effectively avoid addressing the question of how life began here on Earth. But this doesn’t solve the problem of how life began in some other place. As Paul Davies argued, “You don’t explain something simply by declaring that it has always been there.”17
SIGNS OF DESIGN: IS THERE EVIDENCE OF AN ARTIST?
Scientists continue to search for explanations from “inside the room” to account for the design features we’ve described in biological organisms. Their efforts, according to Franklin Harold and molecular biologist James Shapiro, have amounted to little more than “wishful speculation,” however.1 The counterproposals offered by those who reject an external intelligent cause are instructive and serve to reinforce the design inference we’ve observed so far.
COULD MOLECULAR “BORROWING” ACCOUNT FOR THE APPEARANCE OF DESIGN?
In an effort to nullify the powerful design inference from the irreducible complexity of the flagellum, some have offered a “shortcut” of sorts. Philosopher Robert T. Pennock believes the complex flagellum can be formed through an evolutionary process whereby a less complex micro-machine is borrowed from within the cell and used to build something new.2
Some scientists have suggested type III secretion systems (T3SS) as a perfect example of one of these borrowed micro-machines. T3SS are needlelike sensory probes used by bacteria. They detect the presence of organisms the bacteria can infect and secrete proteins to aid the infection process. T3SS share many common proteins and are constructed similarly to bacterial flagella. Scientists sometimes offer these T3SS in an effort to explain how evolutionary processes could jump the divide from a single protein to the complexity of the flagellum. By borrowing the T3SS, flagella have a significant head start in their construction. This approach is problematic, however:
THE BORROWED MICRO-MACHINE IS ALSO IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX
T3SS are just as remarkably irreducible as flagella. The T3SS is constructed from approximately thirty different proteins; it’s one of the most complex secretion systems observed in biology today. Like the flagellum, the T3SS requires the minimal configuration of these proteins to function. It cannot be offered as an ultimate explanation for irreducible complexity because its own irreducible complexity requires an explanation.
By way of analogy, when new recruits apply for the position of police officer, they are required to take a written examination. One part of this examination asks applicants to navigate their way from a position on a map to a location of a crime.
While this may appear to be an easy task at first, once the applicant is informed of the numerous roadblocks, one-way streets, limited intersections, and various hazards, the potential pathway becomes nearly impossible to identify:
If an applicant asked for the solution to this problem, would a single point along the path be sufficient as an answer? No. In fact, the applicant would be warranted in asking how he could navigate to this point as well, given the complexity of the obstacles in his path:
Any solution to this problem must be more than a single location; it must be a complete set of directions from the starting point to the location of the crime. In a similar way, any solution to the problem of the bacterial flagellum must be more than simply a single similar micro-machine lacking explanation in its own right.
William Dembski described it this way: “What you have here is not a fully articulated path but an island (the type III secretory system) and a huge jump to the next island (namely, the flagellum). If evolution is going to try to explain how you can island-hop from Los Angeles to Tokyo, basically what the evolutionist has found is the Hawaiian Islands and nothing else. What the evolutionist has not found is the entire archipelago [group of scattered islands] that will take you across.”3
THE PATHWAY TO AND FROM THE BORROWED MICRO-MACHINE IS EVIDENTIALLY UNSUPPORTED
Dembski has correctly identified the problem facing those who deny the design inference from irreducible complexity. There is no evidence to explain the gradual evolutionary progression to the irreducibly complex T3SS (from a single protein), nor any evidence to explain the gradual evolutionary progression from the T3SS (to the flagellum). While many naturalists offer the T3SS as a beacon of hope, they are unable to describe the step-by-step evolution from a protein to the complex T3SS.
University of Rochester biologist H. Allen Orr recognized the deficiencies in evolutionary explanations dependent on wholesale borrowing: “We might think that some of the parts of an irreducibly complex system evolved step by step for some other purpose and were then recruited wholesale to a new function. But this is also unlikely. You may as well hope that half your car’s transmission will suddenly help out in the airbag department. Such things might happen very, very rarely, but they surely do not offer a general solution to irreducible complexity.”4
The proposals offered by scientists attempting to account for the flagellum by borrowing from the T3SS are fanciful but unsupported. When examining these proposals, look carefully at the intermediate constructions required to get from one micro-machine to another. When these pathways are carefully examined, they reveal critical dilemmas and obstacles.5
THE BORROWED MICRO-MACHINE MAY NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR BORROWING
To make matters worse, naturalistic evolutionists are increasingly skeptical of the alleged evolutionary contribution T3SS might make to the flagellum. Many experts recognize the structural similarities between the two micro-machines but reject any particular evolutionary hierarchy, order, or pathway.6 Several scientists believe the T3SS is not an evolutionary precursor to flagella but is more reasonably a product of devolution from flagella.7
If the T3SS was unavailable prior to the existence of flagella, it cannot be offered as an explanation for flagella. Researcher Jonathan Witt summarized the resulting multifaceted problem: “One, the micro-syringe at best accounts for only ten proteins, leaving thirty or more unaccounted for, and these other thirty proteins are not found in any other living system. Second, as a wider body of literature suggests, the system probably developed after the more complicated flagellum, not the other way around. Finally, even if nature had on hand all the right protein parts to make a bacterial flagellum, something would still need to assemble them in precise temporal order, the way cars are assembled in factories. How is such a task presently accomplished?”8
COULD EVOLUTION ACCOUNT FOR THE APPEARANCE OF DESIGN WITHOUT BORROWING?
A number of scientists and researchers have attempted to demonstrate the power evolution has to create irreducibly complex systems (and the appearance of design) by designing sophisticated digital simulations driven by elaborate computer programs. Research of this nature has been ongoing for many years.
The Avida project claimed to explore the “evolutionary origin of complex features.”9 The Ev project attempted to provide an evolutionary explanation for the regions in DNA and RNA (binding sites) where chemical bonds are formed with other molecules. Theoretical biologist Suzanne Sadedin also formulated a geometric model for irreducible complexity and then claimed to have created a simulation to achieve such complexity without the involvement of an intelligent agent.
The work of Adrian Thompson10 is also cited by skeptics who claim Thompson’s digital experiment to evolve frequency-discerning circuits is evidence irreducible complexity can be achieved by evolutionary processes.11 Do computer simulations demonstrate evolution is capable of producing irreducibly complex biological structures? While skeptics often cite these efforts, they fail to account for irreducible complexity without the involvement of an intelligent agent:12
SOME EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTER SIMULATIONS SMUGGLE IN A DESIGNER
Many efforts to create a computer simulation mimicking the evolutionary process are flawed from the onset because they incorporate the involvement of an intelligent designer from their very inception. The Avida programmers “‘stacked the deck’ by studying the evolution of a complex feature that could be built on simpler functions that were also useful.”13 Sadedin’s geometric model was designed in advance to allow for the easy growth of large geometric shapes. Both Avida and the geometric models do not create true Darwinian processes because they are explicitly and intelligently designed to assist the evolution of an irreducibly complex system.14
SOME EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTER SIMULATIONS FAIL TO CREATE IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX STRUCTURES
Even with the help of intelligent programmers and designers, many of these simulations fail to achieve their goal of creating the kind of complexity we see in the bacterial flagellum. Irreducibly complex structures, as first described by Michael Behe, are highly improbable systems in which the removal of a single structural element renders the system inoperable. In addition, these efficient systems are “composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function” of the system.15
These individual parts are also complex in their own right. The simplest building blocks in Behe’s examples are typically single proteins (which, in and of themselves, are very complex). Many of the computer simulations we’ve described fail to produce truly irreducible structures, truly complex building pieces, or integrated systems with well-matched, interacting parts.
The Ev project, for example, produced systems capable of operating when a binding site was removed. As a result, the system is not truly irreducible like the biological examples described by Behe. Adrian Thompson’s digital experiment suffers the same flaw; it also produced circuits capable of operating when some of their parts were removed and, therefore, cannot be used as a model for producing irreducible complexity. Many of the simulations produced only trivially complex structures (on the level of an amino acid rather than a protein) and were incapable of producing the component sophistication seen in irreducibly complex biological systems. The Avida and Ev projects and Sadedin’s geometric model fall into this category. Finally, most of the computer simulations were unable to define the roles of each part in the context of the whole. This is important because “well-matched, interacting parts” can’t be evaluated unless we first know the role of each part. For this reason, computer simulations fail to address a key attribute of irreducible complexity.
T3SS micro-machines are the best hope for those arguing for molecular borrowing as an explanation for the appearance of irreducible complexity, but they fail in several significant ways. These micro-machines require an explanation for their own irreducible complexity, are unconnected to any evolutionary intermediates, and are unavailable to the evolutionary process for flagella—even if we were to accept evolution as an adequate explanation. To make matters worse, computer simulations designed to replicate the evolutionary process have also failed to demonstrate the necessary creative power of evolution.
Explanations from “inside the room” of the natural, material universe are lacking. But do explanations from “outside the room” suffer from their own evidential shortcomings? Let’s examine alleged “deficiencies” in more detail.
DOES DESIGN “IMPERFECTION” DISQUALIFY EXTERNAL INTELLIGENCE AS AN EXPLANATION?
Beyond the problem of irreducible complexity in flagella, some have argued against the involvement of an external designer on the basis of perceived imperfections within biological structures. If there is an all-powerful, intelligent designer, this designer would be working from scratch and should be capable of creating optimally designed micro-machines and biological structures.
Evolution, on the other hand, modifies and builds from existing structures, and this process won’t necessarily produce design perfection. Scientists and philosophers who identify imperfections (and liabilities) in biological organisms point to these deficiencies as evidence against the involvement of an external intelligent agent.16
Some skeptics have also offered DNA as an example of design imperfection, given the presence of nonfunctional genes (“junk DNA”) within a variety of genomes. According to these critics, if a powerful, intelligent creator designed the DNA with these nonfunctional “pseudogenes,” the designer was apparently error prone, wasting millions of DNA bases. Imprecise evolutionary processes resulting from random gene mutations are offered as a better explanation for the nonfunctional genes we find in DNA.17
But examples of apparent biological imperfections fail to negate the reasonable existence of a designer:
THE APPEARANCE OF “IMPERFECTION” OFTEN RESULTS FROM ENTROPY OR ADAPTATION
Those who advocate for the existence and interaction of an external intelligent designer aren’t denying the impact of entropy or adaptation over time. Rather than an either/or explanation resulting from the creative interaction of an intelligent designer or unguided natural processes, the explanation for “imperfection” we observe in biological systems is most reasonably inferred as the result of intelligent design and processes of modification over time.
One example of design “imperfection,” the sesamoid-bone “thumb” observed on pandas, is typically offered as an example of poor or inadequate design.
The panda’s “thumb” seems to be an imperfect appendage. Unlike the opposing thumbs of primates, the panda’s “thumb” is unable to grasp as efficiently as would be the case if it were shaped just slightly differently. As a result, many naturalists have offered the panda’s thumb as an example of the kind of imperfect shape we might expect from the evolutionary process and as an evidence against intelligent design.
But this unusual protrusion found in pandas isn’t necessarily the product of an intentional, original design. Mutation and selection operate on all biological organisms, whether they are initially designed or not. The panda’s thumb may simply be an adaptation of an original design.18
Those advocating for an external designer recognize the real and pervasive power entropy has to pervert design in nature. The second law of thermodynamics is an inescapable reality, resulting in degradation from order to disorder. When we see an apparent example of imperfection, entropy may be the better explanation.19
THE APPEARANCE OF “IMPERFECTION” OFTEN RESULTS FROM OUR LIMITED UNDERSTANDING
There are times when our limited understanding of biological systems leads us to perceive some degree of imperfection even when this is not the case. This appears to be the situation involving what used to be considered “junk DNA.” The more we learn about apparent “nonfunctioning” genes and seemingly useless genomic regions, the more we recognize them as important contributors to an elaborate informational system. In the past several years, scientists have discovered a large number of non-protein-coding DNA regions under strong “selective constraint.”
Evolutionary scientists recognize these genetic regions have been maintained in the genome for a very long time, even from an evolutionary perspective. The retention of these regions of the DNA molecule indicates their importance to the organism, even if scientists are presently unable to understand why they are important.
Typically, those regions of the genome demonstrating “selective constraint” are fundamental to an organism’s ability to survive. These previously undervalued regions of the genome apparently have an important, yet unrecognized, role to play.
Scientists have now concluded these “junk sequences” are not junk at all but “have been under purifying selection and have a significant function that contributes to host viability.”20 What might at first appear to be an unnecessary, imperfect, extraneous mutation isn’t necessarily the case. It may simply be a matter of our limited understanding.
THE APPEARANCE OF “IMPERFECTION” OFTEN RESULTS FROM OUR NARROW PERSPECTIVE
Prior to serving as a detective, I was classically trained as a designer and architect. Working in an architectural firm in Santa Monica, California, I was typically assigned very limited responsibilities within much larger design projects.
While the lead architect was responsible for the overall design of the building, I was sometimes given the limited responsibility of designing an entry portico or the arches in a large courtyard. I would design a prototype only to have the firm’s principal modify the design later. I often found his modifications were necessary because I’d overlooked some important relationship between design elements. He understood the functional connectivity between these design elements better than I did, and I often had to compromise some aspect of my effort to achieve the larger goal.
This is nearly always the case when engaged in the design process. Every design effort has an impact on some other feature of the overall project, and compromise is essential, even when trying to remove an annoying, apparently “imperfect” feature in the design. As engineer and historian Henry Petroski wrote, “When a new design removes one of these annoyances, it more likely than not fails to address some others or adds a new one of its own. This is what makes engineering and inventing so challenging. All design involves conflicting objectives and hence compromise, and the best designs will always be those that come up with the best compromise.”21
For this reason, we simply cannot assume a design is somehow “imperfect” unless we know precisely the goals (or motives) of the designer and the challenges incumbent in the project.22
As detectives investigating the designs we observe in cellular systems, our limited perspective and understanding sometimes inhibit our ability to fairly judge the design features we observe. One example of this is seen in complaints leveled against the design of the human eye. Although the vertebrate eye is a marvel of complexity, demonstrating many of the design features we’ve already identified, critics cite flaws within the structure of the eye.
The eye’s retina is described as “inside out.” The nerves and blood vessels are positioned on the surface of the retina instead of behind it (as in some invertebrates). As a result, mammalian eyes must accommodate a number of difficult adaptations resulting in a blind spot. Viewed without an exhaustive understanding of the motives of the designer, one might easily conclude (as have Richard Dawkins and Kenneth Miller) the design of the human eye is imperfect. Both Dawkins and Miller have proposed alternative solutions eliminating the way light is presently blocked by the location of the eye’s optic nerve.
Their solutions, however, demonstrate the complexity of the design process as we’ve described it so far. Biologist George Ayoub said proposed solutions create even larger problems for the overall design of the eye: “In trying to eliminate the blind spot, we have generated a host of new and more severe functional problems to solve.”23
As it turns out, the eye’s designer has taken the blind spot into consideration and compensated for it, creating the least number of debilitating handicaps. Vertebrate eyes compensate for the blockage of light due to the position of the optic nerve with special glial cells. These cells sit over the retina like fiber-optic cables channeling light through the optic-nerve wires directly to the photoreceptor cells.
According to science writer Kate McAlpine, these cells prevent light from being scattered and “act as light filters, keeping images clear.”24 As it turns out, the design “imperfections” described by Dawkins and Miller are not true imperfections at all. The overall design of the eye optimizes its ability to transmit images with great speed, sensitivity, and resolution.25
Our limited perspective and unreasonable presuppositions often result in unwarranted conclusions. Dembski captured it well when he wrote, “Whereas optimal design demands a perfectionistic, anal-retentive designer who has to get everything just right, intelligent design fits our ordinary experience of design, which is always conditioned by the needs of a situation and therefore always falls short of some idealized global optimum.”26
DO “VESTIGIAL” STRUCTURES AND ORGANS DISQUALIFY EXTERNAL INTELLIGENCE AS AN EXPLANATION?
Some critics have pointed to the existence of seemingly unnecessary “vestigial” structures as verification of evolution rather than intelligent design.27 The appendix and tailbone are typically offered as examples of needless, evolutionary remnants in humans, and Dawkins cites blind cave salamanders as an example in the reptilian world.28 Examples such as these do not, however, serve as sufficient evidence against the interaction of an external intelligent agent:
VESTIGIAL STRUCTURES AREN’T NECESSARILY VESTIGIAL
As someone who had his gallbladder removed a few years ago, I recognize some parts of my body may be less necessary than others, but you really don’t know how important something is until you’ve had to live without it. Sometimes the differences are subtle or nearly unrecognizable; sometimes they’re more obvious.
The more we learn about the appendix, for example, the more we recognize its role in the larger context of the human body. Recent research has revealed the appendix plays an important neonatal role related to immune functions. Endocrine cells appear in our appendixes while we are still in the womb, producing a variety of hormones controlling organ stability. The appendix continues to function in this role, reaching its peak in our teens and twenties. Science writer Charles Choi noted, “The body’s appendix has long been thought of as nothing more than a worthless evolutionary artifact [a “vestigial” organ], good for nothing save a potentially lethal case of inflammation. Now researchers suggest the appendix is a lot more than a useless remnant.… In a way, the idea that the appendix is an organ whose time has passed has itself become a concept whose time is over.”29
Before we can fairly cite a biological structure as “vestigial,” we need a complete understanding of its role in the larger scheme of the organism. This level of understanding is typically elusive.30
VESTIGIAL STRUCTURES ARE EXAMPLES OF DEVOLUTION, NOT EVOLUTION
Like biological “imperfections,” “vestigial” structures are consistent with what we might expect as designed organisms degrade or adapt over time. One intentional aspect of design in biological structures is the purposeful ability to adapt and conform to environmental pressures. Those who advocate for an external intelligent designer recognize this design feature within biological systems.
As organisms adapt and degrade over time, they lose some of the features of their original design. Dembski noted the impact of such degradation on Dawkins’s blind salamanders: “Eyeless salamanders are certainly consistent with natural selection. If the salamanders don’t need eyes, they will not die if they lose them. But Darwin wasn’t simply trying to tell us that natural selection occurs: he argued that it has creative power. And the blind cave salamanders represent the exact opposite of creative power. They didn’t gain eyes, they lost them. Ironically, they are evidence for devolution, the exact opposite of Darwinian evolution.… Contrary to what Darwinists have argued, vestigial structures are quite consistent with intelligent design.”31
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Those who cite alleged design “imperfections” or the existence of “vestigial” organs as evidence against an external intelligent designer must first account for the initial creation of the organ they now deem poorly designed or extraneous.32 Poor design is still design, and the “imperfect” or “vestigial” appearance of these designs is better explained as the result of scientific ignorance, entropic forces, or a lack of proper design perspective.
OUR EXPERIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS: ARE WE MORE THAN MATTER?
Committed philosophical naturalists, scientists, and philosophers alike have attempted to explain mental states from “inside the room” of the physical universe. Let’s take a more detailed look at four of these explanations.
ARE MENTAL STATES MERELY BRAIN STATES? (AKA: “IDENTITY” THEORIES)
Some scientists and philosophers continue to argue for an “identity relationship” between the brain and the mind, citing them as identical to each other. From this perspective, mental states (such as anger or pain) are identical to brain states in which, for example, a particular set of neurons may be firing.1
If our mental states are nothing more than brain states (physical, neurological activities of one kind or another), it would be easy to account for mind from the materials and processes available in the physical universe. But while it’s increasingly popular to think of the mind as nothing more than the activity of the brain, this approach has significant liabilities:
THERE ARE SEVERAL IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MIND AND BRAIN
First and foremost, we’ve already acknowledged a number of important differences between mental and physical states and entities. Any attempt to form an identity relationship between the mind and the brain must overcome these differences, yet no theory has yet been able to do so. The power of this dilemma shouldn’t be underestimated. The five distinct differences between the mind and the brain stand as five good reasons to reject an identity relationship.
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY IN THE BRAIN CANNOT BE GENERALIZED
If certain types of physical brain activities are identical with particular kinds of mental states, we ought to be able to match the two neatly, even in a variety of individuals and settings. But this isn’t possible. It turns out our mental states are interconnected with our past experiences, subjective histories, and personal idiosyncrasies. They are specific to individuals; researchers are unable to identify a “type to type” relationship between physical processes and mental states generally.
In fact, species other than humans—dogs, for example—also experience mental states (such as pain) even though they have very different brain structures. If, on the other hand, brain states cannot be generalized as “types” and are, instead, specific to individuals, we would be unable to talk about broad categories of mental states. It would be difficult to refer to “pain,” for example, if the mental state is identical to a physical brain state, yet different in every member of the species because it is specific to individuals.
LOGICAL CONNECTIVITY IS DIFFERENT FROM PHYSICAL CAUSALITY
Mental states are complex and interconnected. They are specific to the subjective thoughts and experiences of the person who holds them, and their connections are logical rather than causal. While physical objects are subject to laws of physics, mental states are subject to laws of logic.
In other words, while logical relationships between mental states determine (at least in part) what kind of mental state we might experience, no such relationship exists between neurons firing in the brain. As philosopher Edward Feser observed, “There seems to be no way to match up sets of logically interrelated mental states with sets of merely causally interrelated brain states, and thus no way to reduce the mental to the physical.”2
WE COULD IMAGINE THE EXISTENCE OF MIND WITHOUT BRAIN (AND VICE VERSA)
To make the situation even more difficult, most philosophers and scientists acknowledge the metaphysical possibility a mind could exist without any brain at all. One could imagine, for example, extraterrestrial creatures who might be physiologically different from humans, possessing minds with completely different physiologies (and without any neuron activity at all).
Philosophers have also proposed examples of brains without minds. All of us are familiar with the fictional concept of zombies, but from a philosophical perspective, zombies are an important hypothetical proposal. Imagine a human being who is identical to you in every physical and functional way, yet without any mental life whatsoever.
This zombie version of you has a brain and a central nervous system and is able to respond to stimuli. From outward appearances, the zombie cannot be distinguished from you in any way. If he slams his finger in a door, his physiological system would efficiently send signals from the damaged nerve endings through the central nervous system to his brain, causing the zombie to respond accordingly. He would pull back his finger, wince facially, and scream. All of this would occur without any conscious, subjective mental state of pain, however, because the zombie has no consciousness.
From a philosophical perspective, zombies seem metaphysically possible, and if they are, strict materialism is false. We could exist like zombies, yet we don’t. As humans, we possess more than the simply physical, behavioral, and functional abilities of zombies; we have a mental life over and above the purely physical life of zombies. If minds can exist without brains, and brains can exist without minds, mental states cannot be identical to brain states.3
ARE MENTAL STATES NOTHING MORE THAN BEHAVIOR? (AKA: “BEHAVIORISM” THEORIES)
Another way to account for mind from a purely physical perspective is to simply reduce mental states to expressions of behavior.4 From the perspective of behaviorism, a sensation of anger (previously identified as a mental state) is nothing more than a public demonstration of certain behaviors such as frowning, stomping around the room, slamming doors, and screaming.
From this perspective, when we say someone is angry, we aren’t actually referring to a nonmaterial mental state at all. Instead, we are referring to the outward physical behaviors exhibited by the person under consideration. From a behaviorist perspective, even mental states such as desires are reduced to publicly observed actions. For example, to say “I want to take the suspect to jail” is simply to say I am inclined to talk about the arrest, write an arrest warrant, or make tactical plans for the arrest. In other words, all private mental states are reduced to public behaviors resulting from physical processes of input and output.
In one sense, it’s easy to see why this approach would be favored by those who want to stay “in the room” of the physical universe to account for the existence of mind. If behaviorism is true, it would be easy to explain the mind in purely physical, observable terms. Behaviorism, however, also has several significant liabilities:
THE CAUSES OF BEHAVIORS ARE DIFFERENT THAN THE BEHAVIORS THEMSELVES
My arrest warrant may be rejected by a judge, and as a result, I may frown, stomp around the room, and slam the door. But one could still ask the question, “What is causing Jim to slam the door?” In this case, my anger is what causes me to slam the door, but several other different causal factors could very easily have resulted in the same outcome. The cause (my mental state) is clearly something different than my behavior.
NOT ALL MENTAL STATES RESULT IN OUTWARD EXPRESSIONS OF BEHAVIOR
Perhaps more importantly, I may be angry about the search warrant and display no outward signs whatsoever. I can be angry without behaving angrily. If this is possible, mental states cannot be identical to behaviors.
YOU CAN BE CERTAIN ABOUT BEHAVIOR BUT MISTAKEN ABOUT MENTAL STATES
In addition, there are clearly times when we’ve been mistaken about the thoughts or emotions of a friend or loved one because we’ve misinterpreted their outward behavior. While we can be certain about how someone is behaving, we’re not always correct about the mental states leading to this behavior.
IF MENTAL STATES ARE BEHAVIORS, YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW WHAT YOU BELIEVE
If mental states are nothing more than behaviors, none of us could actually know what we believe until we observed our behavior. Yet we are clearly aware of our beliefs, sensations, and thoughts even before we behave in any particular way.
ARE MENTAL STATES ONLY FUNCTIONAL STATES? (AKA: “FUNCTIONALISM” THEORIES)
While there are several versions of functionalism, one form allows for an entirely physical theory of the mind. “Machine state” functionalism considers the brain to be a complex machine of sorts, capable of receiving sensory input in a variety of situations and programmed with instructions to encourage specific responses to this input, resulting in behaviors. Just as computers are physical machines powered by electricity to analyze inputs and provide outputs, brains are also physical machines, powered by neural activity to analyze inputs and provide outputs.5
From this perspective, if computers (or robots) could eventually be constructed with this complex, functional ability to analyze all incoming data to cause a particular outgoing behavior, these purely physical entities could be said to possess minds. While this approach to mind allows us to describe it from “inside the room” of the material universe (with an entirely physical, functional definition), it also suffers from several significant liabilities:
FUNCTIONALITY DOESN’T NECESSARILY RESULT IN MENTAL STATES
Philosopher John Searle provided a classic thought experiment demonstrating the inability of functionalism to produce characteristics of mind. In his famous “Chinese Room” illustration, Searle described an English-speaking person in a room filled only with Chinese symbols in baskets and an English rule book describing how these symbols should be placed in relationship to one another based purely on their syntax rather than their semantic meaning.
Chinese-speaking people outside the room pass two or three Chinese symbols to the English speaker inside the room. Unbeknownst to the English speaker, the Chinese people have inserted a question written in Chinese. The English speaker, following the rule book meticulously, assembles the required symbols based only on the specific rules described in the book and then passes them back. Because of the thoroughness and specificity of the rule book, the resulting symbol combination is actually an intelligible answer to the question first offered.
Searle’s point is simple: “By virtue of offering a formal computer program (the rule book) from the point of view of an outside observer, [the English speaker] behaves exactly as if [he] understood Chinese, but all the same [he didn’t] understand a word of Chinese.”6 If our brains are just computing machines, we could certainly produce specific behaviors with the appearance of understanding, but we would do this without truly comprehending what we were doing. Functional systems, operating strictly by the functional, causal rules of input and output, simply cannot provide us with mental states of understanding and meaning.
FUNCTIONALISM CANNOT EXPLAIN INDIVIDUAL MENTAL EXPERIENCES
Another problem with functionalism has been exposed with something called “inverted qualia.” Imagine, for example, a particular mental state: the experience of “blueness.” Now imagine two police officers, Greg and Dave, wearing dark blue uniforms. When asked about the color of their uniforms, both look down at their shirts and say, “My uniform is blue.”
According to functionalism, Greg and Dave are both experiencing the same mental state; they are both aware of the “blueness” of their uniforms. But now imagine for the sake of this illustration, Dave has an inverted color awareness related to blue. Every time he sees blue, he is actually seeing what others (including Greg) describe as orange. Now, when asked to describe the color of his uniform, Dave looks at his shirt, considers his experiential database, and selects the word “blue” to describe what he sees as orange but has learned to call “blue.”
If functionalism is true, Greg and Dave were in the exact same mental state as they assessed their shirts visually, selected the word “blue” from the possible colors available to them, and provided this word to describe the color of their shirts. But clearly Greg and Dave are having two different internal, mental experiences. One is experiencing “blueness” and the other “orangeness.” While they may function the same way—especially from the perspective of an outside observer—their functional states are not the same as their mental states.
COUNTER EXAMPLES EXPOSE THE ABSURDITY OF FUNCTIONALISM
Philosopher Ned Block highlighted a problem with functionalism many of us sense intuitively. In his “Chinese Nation” illustration, he offered a counter example, illustrating why strict functionalism cannot result in mind. Imagine we assembled an extremely large group of people (hence the reference to the nation of China) and organized them to function exactly like a brain, with each person strictly instructed to act and react like a neuron (adding nothing to, and taking nothing away, from neuron behavior). If functionalism is true, as long as each person in this huge group performed his or her proper functional role (correctly obeying the instructed causal duties of input and output), this large group of people would be a real mind, with transcendent mental states, consciousness, and all the other properties of mind.7
But even if all the members of this group behaved in this way, there is no reason to believe a mind would result. In fact, this simple illustration highlights the absurdity of such a notion and exposes the weakness of functionalism to explain mental states.
ARE MENTAL STATES NONEXISTENT? (AKA: “ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM” THEORIES)
Most of us who are even remotely familiar with the history of science recognize some theories have a shorter shelf life than others. There was a time, for example, when scientists trying to understand the nature of combustion proposed a fire-like element called phlogiston. When asked to describe what happened at the point of combustion, they might have responded, “When something begins to combust, phlogiston is released.”
As scientists learned more about the nature of combustion and the role of oxygen, they abandoned the faulty theory of phlogiston, along with its antiquated terminology. Scientists eventually replaced this archaic explanation with current oxidation theories. Some philosophers, known as eliminative materialists, view “mental states” as yet another outdated, faulty notion riddled with antiquated language from “folk psychology.”
In the past, we might have described mental states—in this case, happiness—by saying something like “People who are happy tend to smile.” But from the perspective of the eliminative materialist, this explanation is just as outdated as “When something begins to combust, phlogiston is released.” From the perspective of eliminative materialism, there is no such thing as a mental state any more than there is phlogiston. Smiles are simply the result of physical activity in the brain.8
If we can eliminate mental states in this way (by eliminating the terminology we have been using to describe them), we can certainly stay “inside the room” of the physical universe for explanations of brain activity, but eliminative materialism has its own liabilities:
THE EVIDENCE FOR ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM ISN’T AS STRONG AS THE EVIDENCE FROM INTUITION AND EXPERIENCE
Philosophers and scientists recognize eliminative materialism as an extreme position because of its inability to explain our conscious experiences evidentially. Our own firsthand access provides us with evidence of such experiences, as each of us is aware of our own mental states. Eliminative materialists provide very little evidence to support their proposal outside of their complaints related to the limitations of “folk psychology” and its terminology.
The evidence for mental states (as experienced by each of us intuitively) seems far greater than any evidence against such states. The weaknesses we’ve described in the other physicalist theories of mind only exacerbate the problem. If we are going to be asked to abandon our belief in our own mental states, the evidence ought to be far more significant than what has been offered by eliminative materialists.9
ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM IS SELF-REFUTING
More importantly, eliminative materialism presupposes the very thing it is trying to eliminate. Eliminativists believe something is true about mental states: their nonexistence. But when we believe a truth about something (including mental states), we must first believe in the existence of the mental state of “intentionality” (the “about-ness” we’ve been describing). In other words, to declare eliminative materialism as an explanation for mind, the eliminativist must first believe the theory to be true. But if beliefs about theories do exist, eliminative materialism is, by definition, false because it employs a mental state it denies.10
The explanations we’ve examined so far have been from “inside the room” of the physical universe; identity, behaviorist, functionalist, and eliminative materialist theories seek to explain the existence of mind from nothing more than physical components and laws. Another theory seeks to explain mind from something other than matter and physics, however. Let’s examine “dualism” in more detail.
ARE MENTAL STATES SOMETHING OTHER THAN PHYSICAL STATES? (AKA: “DUALISM” THEORIES)
Some philosophers (most of whom are, admittedly, theists) identify the brain and mind as two distinct entities. Dualism describes mind and matter as two separate categories of being; neither can be reduced to the other in any way. From this perspective, the differences we’ve already described between mind and brain need not be reconciled in any way. If nonmaterial minds truly do exist, they are free to possess their own distinct characteristics, unshared by their physical counterparts (brains).11
Materialists (those who reject nonmaterial entities) typically reject such dualistic explanations. If dualism is true, however, the source for nonmaterial mind cannot come from “inside the room” of the material universe, and this, in and of itself, is objectionable to those committed to physical, material explanations. As a result, the following objections have been offered against dualism:
DUALISTIC INTERACTION IS DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND
The interaction problem is perhaps the largest obstacle for dualist explanations. Dualists believe the mind is completely distinct from the brain yet interacts with it in some way. But how precisely does this occur, especially given the nonmaterial nature of the mind? The laws of physics explain the causal interactions between physical objects, but how can a nonmaterial mind interact with a material brain? In response to this objection, philosophers have historically offered a variety of explanations, including occasionalism,12 parallelism,13 and epiphenomenalism.14
But even without certainty related to the specific way in which the mind relates to the brain, this objection alone fails to exclude dualism from consideration. Our lack of understanding about how the mind interacts isn’t prohibitive evidence against this interaction. If dualism is true, we must look to a source external to the physical universe to explain the existence of the mind. This opens the door to the reasonable existence of God and, as a result, extra-natural explanations for the interaction between mind and brain.
However, even without pondering the Divine, there are several examples of causal interactions here in our universe for which we have less than complete understanding. Magnetic fields act on objects, as do gravitational forces. In both cases we have no doubt about the causal interaction between entities, yet we have less than complete understanding about the precise nature of these interactions. And in both cases, the nature of the causes and the character of the effects appear to be substantively different, just as the nature of the mind and the brain are fundamentally different.
DUALISM FAILS TO EXPLAIN EXAMPLES CITED IN BRAIN DAMAGE PATIENTS
Some have objected to dualistic explanations by citing the apparent loss of mental function resulting from brain damage or dementia. Doesn’t this connection between physical brain damage and impaired mental states prove the nonmaterial mind is an illusion?
Not necessarily. Two entities (the mind and the brain) can be causally interconnected without being completely indistinguishable. Dualists agree there is a relationship between the mind and the brain, even as they reject the idea they are one and the same. Even though brain damage may inhibit our access to mental states, this doesn’t mean minds are nonexistent. Faulty computers are often unable to access the Internet, even as the Internet continues to exist. Not all neurosurgeons and researchers reject the existence of the mind; many still search to understand the causal relationship between the mind and the brain.15
DUALISM RESISTS THE GROWING ACCEPTANCE OF PHYSICALISM
Philosophical naturalists deny the existence and influence of nonmaterial (or supernatural) entities, and many scientists are as committed to physicalism and physical evolutionary processes as they are opposed to dualism. The theory of evolution is a wholly physical enterprise; material processes engage matter using the laws of physics and chemistry, guided and shaped by physical, environmental influences. If materialistic, evolutionary processes produce humans such as ourselves, they must also produce human minds. If human minds are the result of purely physical processes of evolution, they must also be physical entities.16
This objection may sound reasonable, but it begs the question. In the end, the explanation we embrace must account for the five distinct evidences differentiating minds from brains. We cannot begin this investigation committed to a presupposition of philosophical naturalism or physicalism when this is the very thing we are trying to investigate in the first place. (We are investigating the question: Is there a nonphysical entity called the mind?)
There appear to be five distinct characteristics of mind distinguishing it from the brain. Whatever explanation we finally embrace, it cannot be chosen (in advance) based purely on our prior philosophical commitments. Like detectives entering a murder scene (or jurors assessing the case in a courtroom), we cannot begin our investigation with a preconceived idea about who killed the victim. We must, instead, allow the evidence to guide our decision.
DUALISM IS SIMPLY THE RESULT OF SCIENTIFIC IMPATIENCE
Some scientists and philosophers object to dualistic explanations because they claim those explanations are merely a result of our current lack of scientific understanding. While it’s true we cannot presently account for the mind from a materialistic perspective, many scientists say this is only a temporary state of affairs; if we wait long enough, we’ll eventually have an adequate explanation without having to go “outside the room” for an answer.
But the challenges presented by the five evidences we’ve listed are increasingly more acute the more we know from science. As our knowledge of the physical world (including the brain) increases, the difficulty in explaining the mind materialistically also increases.17
More importantly, the challenges presented by the distinctions between mind and brain are as much philosophical as they are scientific. This is evident in the quality and character of the explanations offered by behaviorists, identity theorists, functionalists, and eliminative materialists.
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These explanations have been presented by philosophers rather than scientists because they involve a philosophical interpretation of scientific evidence. It’s not that science hasn’t yet accounted for the significant differences between mind and brain; it’s that there may not be a way science could ever account for the difference. In the end, the most reasonable approach to the problem is simply to examine the explanations we presently have to see which makes the most sense of the evidence.
FREE WILL OR FULL WIRING: ARE REAL CHOICES EVEN POSSIBLE?
Efforts from “inside the room” to explain free will as an illusion or to reconcile it with determinism are unsupported by the evidence, errantly redefine the key aspects of the data, or are logically inconsistent. Here is a more detailed examination of these liabilities.
IS OUR DEFINITION OF “FREE WILL” INCORRECT?
One way to reconcile the deterministic nature of our material universe with our perception of free will is simply to redefine what we mean by “free will” in the first place. Some philosophers characterize free will as the unrestricted ability to make a choice when one “could have done otherwise.”
But what do they really mean when they say, “We could have done otherwise”? Many thinkers argue this simply means “I could have made an alternative choice if I wanted to.” While our choices are limited by our foundational desires and wants, as long as we are able to do what we want, we can be said to act freely.1 Under this definition, it really doesn’t matter if my initial wants or desires have been determined by physical processes; if my choices are at least aligned with these desires, one could say I am “doing what I want” freely.
Princeton University philosopher Harry Frankfurt categorized desires and wants into a two-part hierarchy, distinguishing between “first-order” desires and “second-order” desires. Suppose, for example, my partner and I, while working a patrol shift, have a strong desire to eat. Suppose we also wish we didn’t have this desire so we could handle our calls without distraction.
Our desire to eat is, according to Frankfurt, a first-order desire. Our desire to be rid of our desire to eat is a second-order desire. According to this view, first-order desires (or impulses) may simply be the result of material processes in our brains. If this is the case, we can’t be blamed for having these kinds of desires.2 But humans have the unique ability to reflect on their desires and motivations, and this self-reflection is the foundation of free will, according to philosophers such as Frankfurt.
Even though our first-order desires may be determined by physical processes, if we evaluate these desires, agree with them, and then act on them willingly, we are (according to philosophers such as Frankfurt) exercising “free will.” We can, therefore, be blamed (or praised) for our actions. But explanations such as these fail to account for free will for the following reasons:
WE DON’T TYPICALLY EXPERIENCE FIRST-ORDER AND SECOND-ORDER THOUGHT PROCESSES
Critics of Frankfurt’s explanation challenge the first- and second-order hierarchy on experiential grounds. Philosopher Gary Watson, for example, says we don’t typically ask ourselves second-order questions about our desires when making a decision. Instead, we usually ask first-order questions about what we should do. Critics such as Watson believe Frankfurt has inaccurately described the nature of our free-will deliberations, and this criticism seems to be evidenced in our own personal experiences.3
SECOND-ORDER DESIRES ARE JUST AS MATERIALISTICALLY RESTRICTED AS FIRST-ORDER DESIRES
The most obvious objection to hierarchal definitions of desire like the kind offered by Frankfurt is in understanding why higher, second-order desires would be any less physically determined than their lower, first-order counterparts. From a materialistic perspective (“inside the room” of a purely physical universe), how can we possess the second-order autonomy to freely evaluate and reflect on first-order desires in the first place?
The physical processes guiding (and limiting) our foundational wants and first-order desires are the same processes guiding and limiting our ability to evaluate these impulses at any higher level. How can one set of desires be determined yet the other not? Unless we are free from the deterministic limits of matter and brain chemistry, all choices, regardless of position within the hierarchy of desire, are simply the result of physical processes beyond our control.
DID FREE WILL SIMPLY “EMERGE”?
Some philosophers and scientists have speculated free will might simply “emerge” from a deterministic system. Emergence is a concept described in sciences such as physics, chemistry, and sociology. When a property appears spontaneously in a system, unpredicted by the laws governing the individual parts of the system, it is said to have “emerged.”
University of California professor of psychology Michael Gazzaniga cited the analogy of automobile parts: “If you look at an isolated car part, such as a cam shaft, you cannot predict that the freeway will be full of traffic at 5:15 p.m., Monday through Friday. In fact, you could not even predict the phenomenon of traffic would ever occur if you just looked at a brake pad.… A new set of laws emerge that aren’t predicted from the parts alone. The same holds true for brains.… When more than one brain interacts, new and unpredictable things begin to emerge, establishing a new set of rules. Two of the properties that are acquired in this new set of rules that weren’t previously present are responsibility and freedom.”4
While this may seem reasonable by way of analogy, a closer examination exposes the weakness of this explanation:
THIS EXPLANATION FAILS TO ADDRESS THE PHENOMENON OF FREE WILL
Physical analogies such as the one offered by Professor Gazzaniga fail to explain the emergence of consciousness or free will. Automobile parts (even when assembled in the form of automobiles) are still unable to consider or experience the phenomena we call traffic. Car parts aren’t even the cause of traffic in the first place. Instead, humans with minds cause traffic, given our free choices related to the way we use automobiles.
Traffic isn’t an emergent property of automobile parts; it’s a consequence of human free agency. Analogies such as these only highlight the role of our free will and the difference between physical systems and human free agency. As David Chalmers observed, “No explanation given wholly on physical terms can ever account for the emergence of conscious experience.”5
THIS EXPLANATION FAILS TO EXPLAIN HOW BRAINS “INTERACT”
To say free will emerges “when more than one brain interacts” fails to explain how these material organs can physically interact to accomplish this goal. The interaction we experience between one another as thinking human beings requires nonmaterial consciousness and free will before the interaction can take place. If materialism is true, how do material brains physically interact to produce nonphysical consciousness and free will?
THIS EXPLANATION ACKNOWLEDGES THE EXISTENCE OF NONMATERIAL PROPERTIES WITHOUT EXPLAINING THEIR ORIGIN
Even Gazzaniga admitted emergence as an explanation for consciousness or free will has been largely dismissed by neuroscientists. Materialist neuroscience continues to reject dualism and has labored diligently over the past century to demonstrate the sole existence of the brain (while rejecting the mind as illusory). When scientists attribute free will or consciousness to “emergence” without explaining precisely the physical process responsible for the transition, they might as well say, “We have no idea how conscious free will appears, but somehow it just does.”
This sort of explanation allows for free will but fails to account for it from the materials available “inside the room.”6 As a result, it acknowledges the necessity of an extra-natural, external source for consciousness.
CAN WE ATTRIBUTE FREE WILL TO QUANTUM PHYSICS?
Some philosophers have pointed to the research of physicists to find a way to explain free will from “inside the room” of the natural universe. What if the foundational physical laws of the universe are not as deterministic as we once believed? At atomic and subatomic scales (quantum levels), particles do not behave in entirely predictable ways (as do larger material objects). Many physicists (such as Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr) have argued these quantum particles are without set pathways and may not be causally connected like objects at larger scales.
They also believe laws of quantum mechanics may be foundational to the universe. If this is true, at least some physical events aren’t deterministically caused by prior events;7 at the quantum level, the universe may not be deterministic at all but may instead be indeterministic. According to this view, there may, therefore, be room for the physical freedom needed in our brains to break the cause-and-effect determinism I’ve already described.
But while the possibility of indeterminate, foundational laws of quantum physics guiding the universe may seem to provide naturalists with an explanation from “inside the room,” this explanation also has critical liabilities:
THIS EXPLANATION RELIES ON CERTAINTY ABOUT QUANTUM INDETERMINACY
While quantum mechanics is still our best theory related to the subatomic world, we don’t know if there’s actually another layer of reality beneath the quantum layer.8 Many scientists and philosophers believe there are still hidden, unknown variables operating at the quantum scale; if we had this additional information, they believe, the somewhat perplexing nature of the quantum world might turn out to be causally predictable just like larger-scale objects. There are presently a wide variety of quantum physics models, many of which contradict each other.9 We may eventually find the laws of physics are every bit as deterministic at the quantum scale as they are at larger scales.10
THIS EXPLANATION APPLIES QUANTUM MECHANICS AT A LARGER SCALE
Many philosophers question whether the laws of quantum physics can be rightfully applied to what’s happening in our brains in the first place. Although subatomic particles may respond in an indeterminate way at the micro-level, this does not mean our brains are acting in an indeterminate way at the macro-level. The neurons in our brains are composed of many molecules (and even more atoms). Why should we believe the laws of quantum mechanics would also apply to brain activity?11
THIS EXPLANATION STILL DOESN’T GIVE US ANY CONTROL
Even if our brain activity involved indeterminate quantum level activity, this still wouldn’t provide us with the free will we experience on a daily basis. If the events in our brain are indeterminate and random, how could we ever trust our thoughts as our own? How could we be in control of our actions if the thoughts guiding these actions are indeterminate?12
Quantum indeterminacy doesn’t help us to understand our thoughts, choices, or actions. If our thoughts and choices are truly independent of any cause, “every thought and action would seem to merit the statement, ‘I don’t know what came over me.’”13 Philosopher Robert Kane was correct, therefore, when he observed, “If free will is not compatible with Determinism, it does not seem to be compatible with indeterminism either.”14
SHOULD WE REJECT THE EXISTENCE, NECESSITY, AND IMPORTANCE OF FREE WILL?
Strict determinists like Sam Harris don’t even make an effort to explain how free will could exist “inside the room” of the natural, physical universe. Instead, they describe free will as completely illusory and challenge the rest of us to explain why we find it necessary to possess (or account for) it in the first place. Harris sees no need for free will to effectively prosecute lawbreakers: “We need not have any illusions that a causal agent lives within the human mind to recognize that certain people are dangerous.”15
Criminals still need to be isolated from potential victims, even if their actions are not the result of free will. In the end, according to determinists like Harris, we need not acknowledge nor accept the existence of free will to explain our need for a criminal justice system. In fact, Harris argued our world would be a far better place if we accepted the nonexistence of free will: “Once we recognize that even the most terrifying predators are, in a very real sense, unlucky to be who they are, the logic of hating (as opposed to fearing) them begins to unravel.”16
Harris believes our inclinations toward hatred would be reduced if we came to accept free will as an illusion. But is Harris’s optimism justified, and does this attitude toward free will do anything to explain our own experiences of free agency?
THIS EXPLANATION IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THE EVIDENCE
Our experience of (and belief in) free will appears to be an innate and necessary characteristic of human beings, and studies continue to show what happens when we reject this attribute of our being. Our native experience of free will seems to cut across cultural boundaries.
In a 1998 International Social Survey Program study, people from thirty-six countries were surveyed. More than 70 percent agreed their lives were in their own hands.17 More importantly, a number of studies have demonstrated people behave differently if they can be convinced they have no free will.
In 2008, researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of British Columbia conducted experiments highlighting the relationship between a belief in determinism and immoral behavior. They found students who were exposed to deterministic literature prior to taking a test were more likely to cheat on the test than students who were not exposed to literature advocating determinism. The researchers concluded those who deny free will are more inclined to believe their efforts to act morally are futile and are, therefore, less likely to do so.18
In addition, a study conducted by researchers from Florida State University and the University of Kentucky found participants who were exposed to deterministic literature were more likely to act aggressively and less likely to be helpful toward others.19 Even determinist Michael Gazzaniga conceded: “It seems that not only do we believe we control our actions, but it is good for everyone to believe it.”20 The existence of free will is a common characteristic of our experience, and when we deny we have this sort of free agency, there are detrimental consequences.
THIS EXPLANATION ELIMINATES THE HOPE OF REHABILITATION
I work closely with corrections officers who operate and supervise correctional facilities (jails and penitentiaries) in our county and state. If free will is an illusion, none of us is truly free to make decisions of our own volition. In a world like this, correctional facilities are unnecessary. If none of us is able to make the decisions necessary to change or correct our behavior, jails and penitentiaries are nothing more than detention facilities. If determinism is true, we can detain those who might hurt us, but there’s little point in trying to rehabilitate evildoers by encouraging them to change their behavior. I have seen men and women experience transformation while in prison and emerge with renewed purpose and character. While it may be rare, it does occur. But this kind of true transformation requires people to make different choices, and this assumes people have the ability and freedom to do so.21
These four explanations from “inside the room” of the natural universe are inadequate when compared to the powerful evidence of our own experience of free will. But before we can embrace an explanation from “outside the room” (a Mind acting freely to create beings possessing similar characteristics), we’ll need to examine the liabilities of such an explanation in more detail:
DO NEUROLOGICAL STUDIES DISPROVE FREE AGENCY?
Benjamin Libet and John-Dylan Haynes’s brain experiments discovered activity in the brainwaves of their subjects prior to the subjects’ own conscious decisions. Libet and Haynes concluded a physical brain sequence preceded any nonphysical “free” decision. But does this mean our physical brains are really in charge and our conscious decisions are only illusory?
Not necessarily. How do we know this brain activity isn’t simply a signal reporting the beginning of our thoughts prior to a final decision? When choosing between two options, we often ponder the decision (even while we are unaware) prior to making a free choice. There are good reasons to believe this is what Libet and Haynes’s experiments recorded. Haynes’s experiments, for example, identified activity in the prefrontal cortex and the BA10 regions of the brain. Independent studies indicate these regions of the brain are not relevant to free decisions but are instead involved in the formation and storage of plans and intentions.
This seems consistent with Haynes’s findings of a seven- to ten-second gap between activity in these regions and the conscious decision to act. Given this delay of several seconds, it’s far more reasonable to believe activity in these two areas of the brain is related to the unconscious time it takes to form a plan prior to making a final decision than the much shorter period of time we experience when actually making a decision.
Our unrestricted plan formation and our final choices would, therefore, result in the findings recorded by Libet and others. These experiments fail to disprove free will because free agency is, after all, required for us to form plans as well as to make choices.22
DOES DIFFICULTY IN UNDERSTANDING THE “MECHANISM” DISPROVE FREE AGENCY?
Some philosophers find the idea of “personal” or “agent” causation to be completely mysterious or even illogical.23 Can nonphysical minds act in causal relationships with physical bodies? Can nonphysical thoughts cause a physical response? If so, how does this happen?24 Some think the idea absurd or, as famous German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche put it, “the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far.”25
But many agent-causation philosophers disagree, including Roderick Chisholm, Timothy O’Connor, Randolph Clarke, William Rowe, and others. These philosophers argue free actions are caused by personal agents in a way transcending simple event causation. As a result, they cannot be examined or explained in terms familiar to scientists and naturalists.
The objections to this view, for many who reject it, appear to be based in a presuppositional bias against anything other than physical causes. This bias prevents many from accepting what appears to be the best explanation for our own intuitions about free will. If we resist the impulse to limit our answers to only those material processes and systems “inside the room” of the material universe, nonphysical options are available to us, and these explanatory options happen to match our experience of free will.
DOES THE EXISTENCE OF GOD DISPROVE FREE AGENCY?
A number of theistic philosophers have posed a different kind of objection against free will and agent causation. Most Christian theists, for example, believe God is omniscient (all-knowing) and omnipotent (all-powerful). Many believe God “foreordains” and “foreknows” every act any of us could perform. Doesn’t God’s omniscience and omnipotence strip humans of their free will?
Not necessarily. Some theologians believe an all-powerful God may choose not to foreordain every human act in an effort to provide the free will necessary for genuine love and true moral responsibility (more on this in chapters 7 and 8). God could still be all-powerful yet choose to limit this power to create something good.26 Related to God’s all-knowing nature and His foreknowledge of future events, Saint Augustine argued in the fourth and fifth centuries that merely foreknowing something is going to happen is not the same thing as causing it to happen.
Other theologians explain the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human freedom in terms of the relationship between “primary” and “secondary” causality. Here, God’s foreordination (the “primary” cause) includes human free actions (a “secondary” cause).27
Other options can also be found throughout history. Theologians have offered theological and philosophical explanations of human free agency, including Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and Luis de Molina.28
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The idea God’s foreknowledge of future events might restrict our free will is, in many ways, simply a product of theological formulation. Regardless of one’s doctrinal position related to God’s sovereignty and human free agency, one thing is certain: When considering the following options, (1) a universe caused and acted upon by purely impersonal forces and (2) a universe caused and acted upon by a transcendent, personal agent—only the second option allows for any possibility of free agency. Only a transcendent, personal causal agent has the ability to decide whether to restrict a freedom; impersonal forces have no such capacity.
The theological discussion related to how, when, or if humans have true free agency can only occur in a universe created by a personal agent of this nature.
LAW AND ORDER: IS MORALITY MORE THAN AN OPINION?
A number of philosophical naturalists have attempted to account for obligatory moral truths by staying “inside the room” of the physical universe. Some of the approaches taken by these naturalistic thinkers are similar to the strategies employed to explain the existence of free will. Let’s survey naturalistic explanations to see if they can adequately account for the existence of objective moral truth claims without errantly redefining key concepts or suffering from logical contradictions.
ARE MORAL TRUTHS AN ILLUSION?
Some philosophers and scientists deny the existence of moral truth altogether. As Richard Dawkins famously asserted: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”1
Nihilists (derived from the Latin word nihil, meaning “nothing”) reject the idea any moral claim could be either true or false. Some nihilists believe moral claims don’t actually describe what the universe is like but instead describe how humans feel about events occurring in the universe.
For example, the statement “Jesse tortured his victim” is true or false because it describes an event in the universe. But the statement “It was morally wrong for Jesse to torture his victim” does not describe an event. Instead, this second statement merely expresses an attitude about the event. The second statement cannot, according to this view, be classified as either true or false.
In addition, “logical positivist” nihilists argue against moral truth claims because such features of the universe cannot be verified or confirmed by observation or perception. Since we cannot verify (or falsify) the sentence “It was morally wrong for Jesse to torture his victim” with our empirical senses, or through some process of empirical testing, they believe the sentence is meaningless.2 While this approach certainly eliminates the need to account for the evidence of moral truth by rejecting this kind of truth altogether, it suffers from several explanatory liabilities:
THIS APPROACH IS MORE EVASIVE THAN EXPLANATORY
Like efforts to redefine free will or consciousness, this approach to moral truth simply evades the question altogether. When detectives enter a crime scene and encounter a piece of evidence, we’re not allowed to avoid the evidence by redefining or ignoring it. Moral truth cannot be similarly ignored or redefined. All of us have a strong inclination to make moral judgments, even those of us who deny morality is a real feature of the universe. Simply denying the existence of moral truth does not effectively eradicate it.3
THIS APPROACH INAPPROPRIATELY ELEVATES EMPIRICAL OBSERVATION
Many truths can’t be verified through empirical processes of examination. They can’t be accessed through those routes. Truths related to logic and mathematics, for example, must be embraced prior to any empirical, scientific examination. In addition, the assertion “The only meaningful claims are those we can verify with our senses” is itself a claim we cannot verify with our senses. It is a self-refuting assertion violating its own foundation. There are many truths we accept even though we cannot verify them empirically. Moral truths are but one example.4
ARE MORAL TRUTHS SIMPLY BRUTE FACTS ABOUT THE UNIVERSE?
Some philosophers describe moral truths as “brute facts” of the cosmos. Like mathematical truths and the laws of logic, moral truths are described as “fixed features” of the universe.5 Humans don’t create such truths; we simply become aware of them after careful reflection. Moral laws, under this view, are every bit as binding on us as the laws of logic or math. This explanation, while it recognizes and affirms the existence of objective moral truth, fails to adequately explain its origin:
THIS APPROACH FAILS TO ACCOUNT FOR MORAL “OBLIGATIONS”
It’s one thing to acknowledge a particular fact, but another to be obligated to submit to such a fact. Describing moral truth as a brute fact of the universe serves to identify and affirm moral truths without explaining why there are moral obligations.6 The laws of mathematics and logic describe “what is,” but moral laws describe “what ought to be,” and as we observed in the judicial hierarchy governing Jesse’s actions, the moral claims and legal statutes at every level of the judicial pyramid represent obligations between persons.
Those who describe the existence of objective moral truth claims as brute facts of the universe have taken only the first step in explaining their existence. When I discover a piece of evidence in a crime scene, it’s not enough for me to simply identify its existence. I’ve got to figure out how the evidence got in the scene in the first place. Why is it there? If moral truth is a brute fact of the universe, we should reasonably ask why this is the case and begin to examine what kind of universe would necessarily possess moral obligations in the first place.
THIS APPROACH DISCONNECTS MORALITY FROM MIND
As philosopher John Rist observed, moral ideals are “objects of thoughts, not mere constructs or concepts.”7 This poses a problem for those who think transcendent moral truths are brute facts of the universe. The notion of a transcendent, eternal “object of thought” without a transcendent, eternal “thinker of thoughts” is incomprehensible.8
THIS APPROACH SUPPRESSES FURTHER INVESTIGATION
As we saw with efforts to explain the reason for the universe’s existence in chapter 2, explanations such as “That’s just the way it is” or “That’s a pointless question” are largely unsatisfying and serve to suppress further investigation rather than lead us to the truth. Detectives who take this approach typically don’t solve many murders. If reasonable explanations are available, we ought not to ignore them in favor of “That’s just the way it is.”
ARE MORAL TRUTHS A PRODUCT OF INDIVIDUAL BELIEF?
Some naturalistic philosophers believe all moral truth is subjective rather than objective. In other words, subjects (people) are the ultimate source of what is “right” or “wrong.” According to this view, termed “moral subjectivism,” morality varies from person to person. Moral beliefs are based primarily on our subjective feelings, and because these attitudes are specific to each of us individually, they cannot be fairly assumed in others; they are simply personal opinions.
In addition, people often disagree about the moral status of a particular action or situation, and these disagreements are often irreconcilable. Moral subjectivists offer this as yet another reason to reject the existence of objective moral truth. While this does explain morality from “inside the room” of the universe (rooted in the individuals who live here), it lacks explanatory power:
THIS APPROACH OVERESTIMATES THE VALUE OF FEELINGS
The cause of a belief doesn’t always have much to do with whether the belief is true. When I called Jesse’s mother to notify her of her son’s arrest, her feelings would not allow her to believe Jesse had done anything wrong. She loved Jesse deeply; he was her only son and she did her best to protect him from the pervasive gang culture of his neighborhood. She thought her son was incapable of doing wrong.
According to his mother, if Jesse chose to hurt someone, the victim must have deserved it. Jesse and his mother saw nothing wrong with his behavior, but do their feelings preclude us from making a decision about whether Jesse committed an immoral act? No. Feelings may follow from moral realities, but we have to be careful not to allow feelings to dictate moral realities. Jesse and his mother can’t make his actions morally right merely by believing they are.
THIS APPROACH ELIMINATES MORAL DEBATE
If moral subjectivism is true, people who disagree about the moral status of an act (as Jesse and I disagreed about the moral status of torture) would be unable to argue for the rightness of their position. If Jesse and I are the final individual determiners of what is right or wrong, neither of us could appeal to anything higher than our own opinions to settle a moral disagreement. How could I think my position related to torture was superior to Jesse’s?
Both of us would be grounding our moral decisions in the same level of authority: our personal authority. If morality is subjective, no one has the right to say he or she is morally correct or someone else is morally incorrect.9
THIS APPROACH LEADS TO MORAL SELFISHNESS
If individuals are the source of all moral truth, what stops us from simply pursuing our own self-interests? In fact, ethical “egoists” believe each of us has a moral duty to advance what’s in one’s own long-term best interest.10
As a cold-case homicide detective, I can certainly testify to the selfishness I’ve seen in the humans I’ve arrested over the years. But I’m not the only one to observe this. Evolutionary biologist George Williams has chronicled the selfish behavior represented throughout the animal kingdom.11 If moral truth is rooted in the beliefs and opinions of subjects, why should anyone care about anyone other than himself or his own family or tribe?
Moral subjectivism leads to a worldview in which such altruism makes little or no moral sense. If this kind of subjectivism is true, we live in a “dog eat dog,” “survival of the fittest” world, reflected perfectly in the behavior of Jesse and his rival gang members.
In addition, selfless duty makes little or no sense in such a world. Why should I, as a police officer, risk my life and the future of my family to help others? As philosopher Louis Pojman once wrote, “Subjectivism treats individuals like billiard balls on a societal pool table where they meet only in radical collisions, each aimed at his or her own goal and striving to do in the others before they themselves are done in.”12
ARE MORAL TRUTHS A PRODUCT OF CULTURE?
Given the difficulty in rooting moral truth in the feelings and opinions of individuals, many philosophers reject moral subjectivism. They seek a different way to explain moral truth from “inside the room” of the natural universe, pointing, instead, to societies and cultures as the source of morality. According to this view, termed “moral relativism,” morality varies from culture to culture. There are no objective, transcendent, universal moral standards “on all men at all times.”13
Some societies, for example, treat women with much less dignity than others. Some cultures are more violent than others. Each of these people groups believes their own actions are morally appropriate. As a result, some would say, “Morality is in the eye of the beholder.” According to moral relativists, this is evidence of the cultural flexibility of moral truth and demonstrates all moral truth is simply a product of cultural “utility.”14
Moral relativists believe cultures and people groups create their moral codes rather than discover them. Moral codes are a social construct designed by the majority to help the group maintain social harmony and increase their ability to survive. But if cultural agreement determines moral truth, several problems emerge:
THIS APPROACH CONFUSES CULTURAL DIVERSITY WITH MORAL CLARITY
Moral relativism rightly recognizes the cultural and moral diversity of our world, but this observation fails to falsify the existence of transcendent, objective moral truths. Cultures can differ on their beliefs about what causes tuberculosis, for example, but this does not mean there isn’t an objective truth about the cause and nature of the disease. Diversity of subjective belief has little to do with the existence of objective truth.15
THIS APPROACH FAILS TO IDENTIFY WHICH CULTURE REIGNS
The Los Angeles gang subculture is historically rooted and easily identifiable. In most cases, it is also geographically defined. Is this subculture sufficiently established to qualify as a legitimate source for moral truth? If moral truths emerge from the consensus of people groups, why can’t Jesse’s gang culture be considered a legitimate authoritative source of moral truth? Does size or power dictate which groups are qualified to be an authority?
Moral relativism denies us the ability to declare one group more authoritative than the other, unless we are willing to appeal to an authority transcending all groups. A consistent moral relativist cannot argue against the moral legitimacy of a subculture such as Jesse’s.16
THIS APPROACH SILENCES CROSS-CULTURAL CRITICISM
If moral truth is a product of cultural consensus, no specific culture is in the position to criticize or praise the behavior of any other culture. Moral relativism does not allow us to say, “Torture is objectively wrong.” At best we can simply proclaim, “We don’t like torture here in our culture.”
But why should anyone care what we think in the first place if moral truth is relative to each culture? If morals are simply the product of cultural opinion, proclamations about moral truth are like statements about food preferences: interesting, but ultimately meaningless.
THIS APPROACH IS TOO DEPENDENT ON AGREEMENT
If people groups decide what is morally right or wrong, how are we to consider a particular act if there is no definitive cultural agreement? Does this mean an act has no moral status until a majority of us can agree? And how large does the majority have to be?
The issue of abortion, for example, is still a fluid and hotly debated topic. Consensus is sometimes difficult to find, particularly in some regions of the United States. Does the lack of consensus mean abortion is neither morally right nor morally wrong? Not according to advocates on either side of the debate. Each side believes it represents a transcendent, objective moral truth. But if moral relativism is true, we can’t make a declaration on the moral status of any act until we’ve reached a cultural consensus.
THIS APPROACH MARGINALIZES MORAL REFORMERS
If moral truth is decided by cultural agreement, based on the beliefs of the majority, how are we to evaluate those individuals in the minority? Wouldn’t they be considered immoral by definition? Moral reformers like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., who began their efforts at moral reform as individuals advocating a minority view, would be powerless to effect change if moral truth were truly established as moral relativists propose. Reformers such as these appeal to moral truths transcending the majority opinion when they argue for change.
If moral truth begins at the level of culture, there is no authority above one’s society to whom we can appeal.
THIS APPROACH ENCOURAGES AND EMPLOYS IMMORAL BEHAVIOR
If moral codes are systematically created and embraced by cultures in an effort to maintain social harmony and increase survivability, how are we to avoid culturally selfish acts? If a particular activity increases the social harmony and survivability of our culture—but accomplishes this at the brutal expense of a neighboring culture—does this make the behavior morally acceptable? Can we deceive, destroy, or enslave other groups if these behaviors increase the harmony and survivability of our group?
Slavery can actually increase the survivability of one culture over another—especially over the cultures enslaved. In fact, one argument for the continuation of slavery in America revolved around its benefits to the economy. Goals related to survivability, including economic survivability, can and have been co-opted to excuse self-serving immoral behaviors.
THIS APPROACH CONFUSES RECOGNITION WITH EXISTENCE
While it’s clear people groups employ moral principles to further their own well-being and survivability, those who claim societies are the source of such principles—either through some process of social progress or psychological evolution—are confusing moral recognition with moral existence. Even the most robust evolutionary proposals related to the origin of moral truth simply offer a description of why and how humans have employed moral principles to increase their survivability.17
As a cold-case detective, I’ve learned to employ a number of techniques during my interviews with suspects to assess deception and determine truth. These techniques didn’t originate with me; I simply discovered them after many years of trial and error. As it turns out, my father—a police officer himself for twenty-eight years prior to my being hired—discovered and employed many of these same techniques. And my son, now also a police officer for several years, will undoubtedly end up using many of the same methods. We’ve been using these interview principles for three generations, but we didn’t create them.
In a similar way, cultures may recognize and employ moral principles, but this doesn’t mean they created these principles. In fact, many scientists and philosophers are suspicious about any causal relationship between evolution and moral virtue. Thomas Henry Huxley, a strong supporter of Charles Darwin, in his essay “Evolution and Ethics,” argued evolution and morality were at odds with each other. The evolutionary process often results in disharmony and strife; morality seems to require us to overcome the “evolved beast” in each of us.18
Naturalistic philosopher Michael Ruse, who denies the existence of objective moral truth, agreed: “If we are going to cherry pick from the evolutionary process those things we think are good and discard those things we think are bad, we must be appealing to some higher or other foundation for morality.”19
ARE MORAL TRUTHS HUMAN-SPECIFIC BIOLOGICAL FACTS?
Given the problematic nature of moral relativism, and its inability to establish moral truths transcending cultural biases and preferences, some have tried to provide an explanation for objective moral truth from biology. Sam Harris, for example, believes “moral values are really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures.” As humans, we are innately driven toward physiological and psychological “well-being.”20 Well-being (also described as human “flourishing”) is, according to Harris, the purpose of our existence as biological beings. Since human biology transcends human culture, moral truths (if they are rooted in human biology) would also transcend culture, just as some biological diseases (cancer, for example) are common to all people groups.21
Now, consider an analogy: In every chess match—with the goal of capturing the king—some moves are “good” and some are “bad.” “Good and bad,” in this context, can be determined once we know the object of the game. In a similar way, if the well-being of the human species is the goal of human existence, “good and bad” behaviors can be determined by their capacity to achieve this end.22
Scientists and philosophers like Harris believe moral facts are, therefore, simply a product of neuroscience and psychology. They are rooted in human well-being (flourishing) and can be understood as we learn more about biology and the science of the brain.23 This view of moral truth provides an explanation from “inside the room” of the natural universe but fails for several important reasons:
THIS VIEW ASSUMES A MORAL DEFINITION OF “WELL-BEING”
What do advocates of this view of morality mean when they talk about “well-being”? Do they mean “increased survivability”?
We should hope not, because a desire to increase one’s survivability often leads to immoral behavior. Jesse’s gang surely increased their own survivability every time they killed one of their rivals. Those who describe the well-being of humans in this context are describing something more than survivability. Harris said, “There is little doubt that most of what matters to the average person—like fairness, justice, compassion, and a general awareness of terrestrial reality—will be integral to our creating a thriving global civilization and, therefore, to the greater well-being of humanity.”24
This definition of “well-being” smuggles in a number of moral values prior to accounting for their existence. Harris described an innately moral view of health and well-being, including such characteristics as “kindness, reciprocity, trust, openness to argument, respect for evidence, intentions of fairness, impulse control,” and the “mitigation of aggression.”25
But assuming these moral values does not explain how they came to exist in the first place. Just as importantly, one might ask why human biology innately dictates the goal of health (well-being) over, say, pleasure. Jesse, like many of his fellow gangsters, smoked cigarettes. Was his choice to smoke immoral because he chose pleasure over health? No. We might think it unwise, but not immoral.
Even Harris admitted, “Science cannot tell us why, scientifically, we should value health.”26 Our choice to value health or well-being over pleasure (or anything else) is simply that: a choice driven by foundational moral values for which Harris cannot account.
THIS VIEW CONFUSES FACTS WITH NORMS
The majority of psychologists and neuroscientists, even those studying moral reasoning, understand the difference between scientific facts and moral norms.27 It’s one thing to describe what is (where in the brain, for example, one might find synapse activity corresponding to a moral choice), but it’s another thing to explain why a moral choice is either good or bad.28
Facts about how guns work cannot tell us whether you should use one to murder a rival. In a similar way, facts about how our brains work cannot tell us about the value or nature of our moral norms.
THIS VIEW FAILS TO DETERMINE WHICH BEHAVIORS ARE ACTUALLY BENEFICIAL
Even if we believe moral truths are nothing more than biological facts about human flourishing, it’s not always easy to determine which behaviors are beneficial to our well-being in the first place. If the value of every action is to be determined by the consequence the action has on human well-being, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to make these assessments with certainty. How can one truly know if an act will have a positive or negative impact on human flourishing many years down the road?29
THIS VIEW FAILS TO DETERMINE WHOSE WELL-BEING IS MOST IMPORTANT
Why would any of us consider the well-being of strangers prior to the well-being of our own families and communities? If history is any indicator, humans are far more inclined to care for themselves than for others, even when the activities of their own group may ultimately harm the survivability of the entire species. Who gets to define “flourishing” when cultures and individuals disagree about notions of happiness, compassion, contentedness, or physical and psychological health?
When competing interests collide, whose definitions, and whose well-being, warrants our consideration? As philosopher Patricia Churchland observed, “No one has the slightest idea how to compare the mild headache of five million against the broken legs of two, or the needs of one’s own two children against the needs of a hundred unrelated brain-damaged children in Serbia.”30
Even if we are only interested in the well-being of an isolated group, should we be more concerned about total well-being or average well-being of the group? Those concerned with total well-being prefer a world in which the most people possible are able to live with at least moderate well-being. Those concerned with average well-being prefer a world in which smaller groups maximize their well-being, even if others suffer, so the average for the species is elevated.
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If we derive moral value from an action’s impact on the well-being of the entire species, why should I, as a law enforcement officer, care at all about murdered gang members such as Jesse’s victim? Shouldn’t I be more focused on the fate of those better educated, wealthier, or more intelligent contributors to our society than those who are actually preying on our society? Aren’t those in the first group more likely to contribute to the well-being of our species than those in the second?
Assessing an action’s moral value on the basis of its ultimate consequence is nearly impossible to accomplish and leads to disturbing discrimination.31
THE EVIDENCE OF EVIL: CAN GOD AND EVIL COEXIST?
Does the existence of evil and injustice eliminate a Divine Creator as a reasonable explanation for the evidence “inside the room” of the material universe? As always, sensible explanations must be supported by the evidence, exist without redefining key terms, and resist logical inconsistencies. Let’s examine the seven explanations we’ve offered for evil in more detail.
EVIL CAN BE RECONCILED IF WE HAVE AN ACCURATE VIEW OF ETERNITY
Evil and suffering are typically experienced and understood within the context of one’s life. For thirty-five years as an atheist, I thought of my life as a “line segment” spanning two points: my birth and my death.
I hoped for a life (a “line segment”) of approximately ninety years. In the context of this span of time, if I had developed cancer in my forties, I would have been angered by the amount of time stolen from me as I battled the disease. In fact, if I had been diagnosed with a terminal disease at that age, I would have been outraged to be deprived of 50 percent of the life I expected.
If theism is true, however, and we are more than mere material beings, life is not a line segment. Life is, instead, a ray stretching from the point of our birth, passing through the point of our physical death, and extending to an eternal life beyond the grave.
Now consider any experience of evil, pain, or suffering in the context of an eternal life. You may, for example, remember the painful vaccinations you received as a child. If you’re reading this book at the age of thirty, the small period of your life occupied by the pain you experienced during those vaccinations has been long outdistanced by the years you’ve lived since then. As time stretched on from the point of that experience, you were able to place the pain within the larger context of your life. You don’t even remember it now.
If dualism is true, we are both material and nonmaterial, eternal beings who will live forever. Our experience and understanding of pain and evil must be contextualized within eternity, not within our temporality. Whatever our experience here in our earthly life, no matter how difficult or painful it may be, we must see it through the lens of forever. As our eternal experience stretches beyond our struggles in this life, our temporal suffering will become an ever-shrinking percentage of our consciousness. The anguish we may have experienced on Earth will be long outdistanced by the bliss we’ll experience in eternity.
EVIL CAN BE RECONCILED IF WE HAVE A PROPER REVERENCE FOR FREE AGENCY
When most of us think of the highest moral virtue, we typically think of some form of love. In fact, love seems to be at the center of life’s meaning. Mahatma Gandhi is quoted as saying, “Where there is love there is life.”1 If there is a Divine, all-loving, all-powerful Creator, it seems reasonable this Creator would create a world in which love is possible.
But this kind of “love possibility” world is a dangerous place. Love requires freedom. True love requires humans to have the ability to freely choose; love cannot be forced if it is to be heartfelt and real. I cannot force my children, for example, to love me. Instead, I must demonstrate my love for them, provide them with the knowledge and moral wisdom necessary to make safe and loving choices, and then allow them the personal freedom to love one another and do the right thing.
Eventually, as a parent, I have to let go, and this process of letting go is dangerous. In order for my children to have the freedom to love, they also need the freedom to hate. Freedom of this nature is often costly. A world in which people have the freedom to love and perform great acts of kindness is also a world in which people have the freedom to hate and commit great acts of evil. You cannot have one without the other.
It’s tempting to think an all-powerful Being could create whatever kind of world one could imagine, but the connection between love and free will is inexorably interdependent. “Coerced love” is as oxymoronic as “married bachelorism.” If an all-powerful Creator has the power to eliminate moral imperfection, this Creator would also have the power to eliminate logical imperfection.2 And that’s where the problem lies: a world without freedom makes love logically impossible.3
If the Creator of the universe considers love the highest moral virtue, the only option available is to create a universe in which humans and animals have the freedom to choose love.
Free agency is more valuable than most people might initially believe. Without the freedom to do bad things, none of us could do good things.4 All morally virtuous behaviors (including acts of love) hinge on our free agency. For this reason, freedom must be protected at any and every cost, even if it means allowing free agents to cause pain, suffering, and injustice in the temporal lives of themselves or others.
A benevolent Creator could certainly correct or prevent every act of evil caused by free creatures, but to do so would ultimately rob the universe of true freedom and, therefore, true goodness.5
EVIL CAN BE RECONCILED IF WE HOLD AN APPROPRIATE DEFINITION OF LOVE
What precisely does it mean to be “all-loving,” particularly when we apply this definition to the Divine Creator of the universe? Popular cultural definitions of “love” typically refer to “kindness,” “gentleness,” “adoration,” or “affection.” But if you’re a parent, you know love is much more than this. There are times when kindness and tenderness are appropriate expressions of love, and there are times when love demands stern discipline, correction, and guidance. Good parents learn to embrace a fuller, richer, more complex definition of love.
If our concept of love, when applied to the Creator of the universe, is limited to gentleness and tenderness, we will likely have difficulty reconciling the existence of a Divine Creator with the presence of nearly any hardship we experience. No one likes to experience “tough love”; we much prefer to experience love in its more hedonistic, self-serving forms. As C. S. Lewis so aptly observed, “We want, in fact, not so much a Father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven—a senile benevolence who, as they say, ‘liked to see young people enjoying themselves,’ and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, ‘a good time was had by all.’”6
But there’s a difference between the love of a parent and the love of a grandparent. Parents must embrace a more balanced approach with their children if they truly love them. If the loving nature of the Divine Creator is as broad and all-encompassing as that of a parent, we should expect some difficult circumstances to be an evidence of the Creator’s love, especially if a greater good is achieved as a result of temporal suffering. Parents often discipline their children to accomplish an important goal, but our children usually fail to see our efforts as loving.
Love, in its truest sense, however, is concerned with more than our immediate happiness and pleasure. Love aims for something more lasting. The love of an eternal Creator would seek something beyond our temporal happiness, even though we may fail to see our circumstances as an expression of this love.7
EVIL CAN BE RECONCILED IF WE UNDERSTAND ITS ROLE IN CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
What precisely could a Divine Creator hope to accomplish by allowing evil to exist “inside the room” of the natural universe? One outcome, noted by many philosophers, is the development of character.
Many of my cases involve families who have suffered the violent loss of a loved one. In their prolonged grief (as they waited decades for the cases to be solved) many developed new virtues and characteristics they never anticipated. They grew in their patience and empathy toward others. They developed endurance and perseverance. Many have since begun to volunteer in victims’ rights groups and family support organizations. None of this would have happened had they not suffered the evil they experienced.
Similar character development often occurs after natural disasters. Relief organizations experience their largest influx of volunteers in the days following a major hurricane or earthquake.8 It’s in the face of trials, disasters, and other forms of evil that true courage, compassion, forgiveness, self-sacrifice, and charity are developed.
Without hardship, good character is hard to come by. Wisdom is typically the product of failure, not success, and without loss, we seldom appreciate gain. When we experience evil, we learn to value goodness all the more.9 Hardships educate, train, hone, and prepare us to be better people.10 This character-building purpose for some forms of evil would certainly be consistent with an all-powerful, all-loving Divine Creator, especially if such a Creator has eternity in view and is concerned more with our character than our comfort.
As C. S. Lewis argued, “To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God: because he is what he is, his love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present character, and because he already loves us he must labor to make us lovable.”11
EVIL CAN BE RECONCILED IF WE RECOGNIZE ITS POWER TO DRAW US
Most of us, whether we believe in an all-powerful, all-loving Creator or not, have secretly whispered a prayer at times of desperation. I did it on occasion as a committed atheist, even though I saw it as nothing more than a reflex. But for many people, an encounter with evil is often the first time they seriously think about the existence of a Creator.
As a Christian homicide detective, I’ve seen the power evil has to draw families and victims to the throne of the Divine. When people reach their own limits, realize their true frailty, and come to understand the transient nature of their material lives, they often begin to seek transcendent answers. Many of the families who have suffered the loss of a loved one at the hands of a brutal murderer have been drawn to an “otherworldly” source of strength, hope, and deliverance.
If an all-powerful, all-loving Creator truly exists, some evils might be reconciled based on their ability to refocus our attention, remind us of the nature of eternal life, and draw us to our Creator.12 As philosophy professor Eleonore Stump observed, “No amount of moral or natural evil, of course, can guarantee that a man will seek God’s help. If it could, the willing it produced would not be free. But evil of this sort is the best hope, I think, and maybe the only effective means, for bringing men to such a state.”13
EVIL CAN BE RECONCILED IF WE ACCEPT ITS EXISTENCE AS A CONSEQUENCE
Even as an atheist, I embraced a rather biblical concept of “reaping and sowing,” though I didn’t realize the Bible described this concept. Ideas and actions have consequences, and there are times when we suffer as the result of poor decisions and improper actions. No one is terribly surprised by this form of suffering, and few of us actually consider it to be an evil, per se. We understand we sometimes “get what we deserve.”
Our criminal justice system exists to ensure people “reap what they sow.” Justice comes in three varieties. Sometimes offenders are punished simply for things they have done in the past, typically in proportion to the crime they’ve committed. This is called “retributive justice.”
Sometimes offenders are punished as the result of a forward-looking concern for the future well-being of society. This is called “utilitarian justice.”
Sometimes an offender who has committed a crime against a person (rather than against the state) is held directly accountable to the victim; offenders such as these are required to do their best to “make things right.” This is called “restorative justice.”14
If a Divine Creator truly exists, these three forms of justice might explain the existence of some apparent forms of evil. Such a Creator, possessing and expressing the perfect balance of justice and mercy, may choose on occasion to punish in one of these three ways. This would be particularly appropriate if such a Being was the transcendent source of all objective moral law and also the personal Creator whom we’ve offended and to whom we are obligated.15
EVIL CAN BE RECONCILED IF WE ACKNOWLEDGE OUR LIMITED UNDERSTANDING
I’ve never investigated a case in which I was able to answer every possible question a juror might ask. In fact, the majority of my cases have been successfully prosecuted in spite of a number of unanswered questions. Sometimes suspects confess to every detail and explain everything they were thinking as they committed their crimes, but those are rare occurrences.
When a suspect fails to provide an explanation, I usually try my best to “think like the suspect.” But I’ll be honest: I’m not good at it. I’m far too rational in my approach, and criminals don’t often use good sense. Nearly every effort on my part to project my thinking process onto a suspect has been overly logical.
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Our efforts to discern the thoughts of a Divine Creator aren’t usually much more successful. The categorical difference between a Being of this nature and the humans who might like to understand the motives and thoughts of such a Being are far more dramatic than the difference between detectives and suspects. As mere humans, we lack sufficient data about the causes we might attribute to free agency or the causal connection between reasonable explanations for evil. It’s also impossible for us to know with certainty what future good might result from a present evil or to know the motives a Divine Being might have in bringing about a particular action.16
If a Divine Creator of this magnitude exists, we should expect some evils to be inexplicable and mysterious, given our limited ability to bridge the gap of understanding.17